

















/i 




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THE LIFE OF CHRIST 




Jesus, the Christ. 



THE 

LIFE of CHRIST 

By WILLIAM HANNA, D.D., LL.D 



NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION 

ESPECIALLY ARRANGED FOR BIBLE STUDENTS IN 
TWENTY-FIVE OUTLINE STUDIES AND READING COURSES 

CHARLES H; MORGAN, Ph.D. 



AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 

150 NASSAU STREET - » - NEW YORK 



3T3^S 



Copyright, 1913 
By AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 



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'CJ.A354316 



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* CONTENTS. 



1 > PARTI. 

I THE EAELIEE YEAES OF OITE LOE'D'S LIFE GXK EAETH. 

Preface . page 7 

I. The Annunciation — Mary and Elisabeth 13 

II. The Nativity , 21 

III. The Presentation in the Temple .'..' 31 

IV. The Visit of the Magi 41 

V. The Massacre of the Innocents, and the Plight into Egypt 51 

VI. The Thirty Years at Nazareth — Christ among the Doctors 60 

VII. The Forerunner . ! . 69 

VIII. The Baptism 80 

IX. The Temptation , 88 

X. The First Disciples. 100Z> 

XI. The First Miracle . 110 

XII. The Cleansing of the Temple 121 

XIII. The Conversation with Nicodemus 129Z> 

XIV. The Woman of Samaria. 138 

XV. The Jewish Nobleman and the Eoman Centurion 1495 

XVI. The Pool of Bethesda 157 

XVII. The Synagogue of Nazareth 166 

XVIII. First Sabbath in Capernaum, and First Circuit of Galilee 174 



PART II. 
CHEIST'S MIJSTISTEY IN GALILEE. 

I. The Two Healings — the Leper and the Paralytic 185 

II. The Charge of Sabbath-Breaking 194 

III. The Calling to the Apostolate of St. Peter, St. Andrew, St. Jnmes, 

St. John, and St. Matthew 204 



I CONTENTS. 

IV. The Sermon on the Mount 2136 

V. The Eaising of the Widow's Son and the Euler's Daughter 2216 

VI. The Embassy of the Baptist — the Great Invitation 230 

VII. The Woman who was a Sinner 243 

VIII. The Collision with the Pharisees — the First Parables — the Stilling 

of the Tempest — the Demoniac of Gadara 250 

IX. The Mission of the Twelve 268 

X. The Feeding of the Five Thousand, and the Walking upon the Water 277 

XI. The Discourse in the Synagogue of Capernaum 285 

XII. Pharisaic Traditions — the Syro-Phcenician Woman 2966 

XIII. The Circuit through Decapolis 304 

XIV. The Apostolic Confession at Caesarea-Philippi 312 

XV. The Eebuke of St. Peter 320 

XVI. The Transfiguration 329 

Note 337 

M 

PART III. 
THE CLOSE OF CHRIST'S MINISTRY. 

I. The Descent of the Mount of Transfiguration 341 

II. The- Payment of the Tribute-Money — -the Strife as to Who should be 

Greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven 350 

III. Christ and his Brethren 357 

IV. Christ at the Feast of Tabernacles 365 

V. Jesus the Light of the World, 373 

VI. The Cure of the Man Born Blind 3816 

VII. The Good Shepherd 390 

VIII. Incidents in our Lord 's Last Journey to Jerusalem 403 

IX. Our Lord's Ministry in Peraea, east of the Jordan 411 

X. The Parables of the Peraean Ministry 421 

XL The Good Samaritan 431 

XII. The Lord's Prayer 439 

XIII. Jesus the Eesurrection and the Life 4476 

XIV. The Eaising of Lazarus 457 

XV. The Last Journey through Persea: the Ten Lepers — the Coming of 

the Kingdom — the Question of Divorce — Little Children brought 

to Him — the Young Euler 4666 

XVI. Jesus at Jericho — the Eequest of the Sons of Zebedee 475 

XVIL The Anointing at Bethany 484 



CONTENTS. 7 

PART IV. 
THE PASSION WEEK. 

I. The Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem 493 

II. The Fig-Tree Withering away — The Second Cleansing of the Temple, 500 

III. The Barren Fig-Tree — Parables of the Two Sons and of the Wicked 

Husbandmen 508 

IV. The Marriage of the King's Son — Question as to the Tribute-Money 516 
V. Question of the Sadducees as to the Resurrection of the Dead 526 

VI. The Lawyer's Question — the Two Great Commandments — Christ is 

David 's Son and David 's Lord 534 

VII. The Woes denounced upon the Pharisees 541 

VIII. The Widow 's Mite — Certain Greeks desire to see Jesus 547 

IX. The Prophecies of the Mount 556& 

X. The Prophecies of the Mount 564 

XI. The Parable of the Ten Virgins 570 

XII. The Parable of the Talents 579 

XIII. The Day of Judgment 588 

XIV. The Day of Judgment 596 

XV. The Washing of the Disciples ' Feet 603& 

XVI. The Exposure of Judas 611 

XVII. The Lord 's Supper 622 

XVIII. Gethsemane 631 

■ M 

PART V. 
THE LAST DAY OF OUK LOKD'S PASSION. 

I. The Betrayal and the Betrayer 643 

II. The Denials, Repentance, and Restoration of St. Peter 653 

III. The Trial before the Sanhedrim 663 

IV. Christ 's First Appearance before Pilate 6725 

V. Christ 's Appearance before Herod 681 

VI. Christ 's Second Appearance before Pilate 690 

VII. The Daughters of Jerusalem Weeping 7015 

VIII. The Penitent Thief 711 

IX. The Mother of our Lord 723 

X. The Darkness and the Desertion 733 



3 CONTENTS. 

XL "It is Finished" 741 

XII. The Attendant Miracles 749 

XIII. The Physical Cause of the Death of Christ 759 

XIV. The Burial 769 

: M 

PART VI. 
THE FOETY DAYS AFTEE OUE LOED'S EESITEEECTIOK 

I. The Eesurrection 777 

II. Appearance to Mary Magdalene 786 

III. The Journey to Emmaus 791 

IV. The Evening Meeting 802 

V. The Incredulity of Thomas 811 

VI. The Lake-Side of Galilee 820 

VII. Peter and John 827 

VIII. The Great Commission 836 

IX. The Ascension 853 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 

THE ENTIRE CONTENTS OF THIS VOLUME OUTLINED IN TWENTY-FIVE 
STUDIES WITH EXPLANATORY SECTIONS. 

BY 

Rev. CHARLES HERBERT MORGAN, Ph.D., 

Author of " Studies in the Life of Christ," " Studies in the Old Testament," 
"The Scholars' Bible," etc. 



INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT. 

Bible study is constantly growing in range and variety. Espe- 
cially are simple courses needed by pastors and leaders in young people's 
organizations, men's brotherhoods, women's societies, for the mid- 
week service, to follow revival meetings, and at other times. 

Courses upon other portions of the Bible cannot compare in general 
usefulness with a course upon the Gospels and the Life of Christ. 
This course of twenty-five Studies has been specially prepared for 
this new edition of Dr. Hanna's "Life of Christ," and offers the 
advantage of an outline plan resting upon a single volume, instead of 
the confusion which often results from almost a library of reference 
books. It will be seen by a glance at the six Parts of this Outline, that 
Dr. Hanna's " Life of Christ" conforms in plan to the latest and most 
scientific arrangement of Life of Christ courses. 

There are three features that mark off these later methods of 
arranging the Life of Christ in an orderly manner from the earlier 
plans. 

In the first place, the dominant idea now in viewing the Life of our 
Lord is his Ministry, instead of the mechanical classification by years 
which was formerly used. 

In the second place, the Ministry of our Lord is viewed from the 
standpoints of the Preparation made for it and of the several Provinces 
in which, in the main, it was successively accomplished. 

In the third place, all the recent improved plans of arranging our 
Lord's Life give a very prominent place to the Passion Week. 

As the Outline which follows is examined, it will be evident how 
fully these three features are represented. 



10 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

PART I. PREPARATION AND EARLY MINISTRY. 
Study 1. Birth and Infancy. 

(1) Coming of the Divine Redeemer attended by the service of angelic 

messengers 13~15 

(2) Mary the Mother of Jesus 15-21 

a. Promise made to her 15, 16 

b. Her unquestioning faith 16-18 

c. Her visit to Elisabeth. . ; 19, 20 

d. Her hymn of praise 20, 21 

(3) The Nativity 21-31 

a. Divine ordering as to place 21, 22 

b. Determination as to time 23-25 

c. Meeting-place of lowliness and majesty 26-31 

(4) Presentation in the temple 31-40 

a. Preceded by circumcision 31, 32 

b. Meaning of the presentation 32-36 

c. Utterances of Simeon and Anna 36-40 

(5) Visit of the Magi 41-50 

a. Character of these visitors 41, 42 

b. Sign which guided them 43, 44, 46-48 

c. Policy of Herod 44, 45 

d. Magi's gifts, worship, and home-going 49, 50* 

(6) Massacre of the innocents 51-59 

a. Three New Testament Herods 51 

b. Character of Herod the Great 51-53 

c. He orders children slain at Bethlehem 53-55 

d. Scripture allusion to Rachel explained i 58, 59 

(7) Flight into Egypt and return to Nazareth 55-57 

\ 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 11 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 



When this course of Outline Studies is taken up by a leader or a 
student, it will be helpful first of all to form an idea of its general direc- 
tion. 

Christ's life has as its earthly setting the land of Palestine — a 
small country in extent, being only about 140 miles from north to 
south and 80 miles from west to east. Its two chief fields of interest, 
as respects our Lord's life, are the Province of Galilee in the north, 
especially that part of it connected with the west shore of the Sea of 
Galilee, and the Province of Judea in the south, with its life centering 
in the capital city Jerusalem. 

All of Christ's childhood, youth, and early manhood up to thirty 
w T as passed in the little village of Nazareth, in the southern part of 
Galilee, except the visit to Jerusalem at the age of twelve. He was 
simply looked upon as a humble Galilean peasant, a carpenter following 
the trade of Joseph, and perhaps, after the death of the latter, the head 
and main support of the family. 

When his public work began, though he early presented himself in 
Judea at Jerusalem and in the very courts of the temple, he w r on no 
large following. Yet on this trip he had two wonderful personal 
interviews. It was, however, among the warm-hearted Galileans where 
he had been brought up that he was first able to attract the multitudes 
to his ministry. This general view carries us to the end of Part I. 

As we now turn to Study 1, we see that in the advent into our world 
of One who has worked so profoundly that all standards of influence 
have had to be revised in order to measure the place which he holds, 
the presence of the supernatural can awaken no surprise. The present 
Study reveals the birth of Christ as preceded by angelic assurance to 
Mary that she is to be the mother of the Redeemer. God has prov- 
identially determined the place and the time of the nativity, and the 
humble scenes at Bethlehem form the true and right prelude to the 
inauguration of the empire of self-sacrificing love. The nativity is 
followed by the presentation in the temple, the visit of the Magi, 
the massacre of the innocents, the flight into Egypt, and the return to 
Nazareth. 

By reference to the foot-notes of the pages covered by this Study, 
it wall be seen that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are the ones 
that almost wholly treat of the nativity and infancy of Christ. Luke 
largely comes first in order, presenting the events that lead up to and 
attend the birth of Christ; Matthew then chiefly carries forward the 
account of Christ's infancy. The outline of the Study is now given. 



12 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 



PARTS AND STUDY TITLES. 
Part I. Preparation and Early Ministry. 

STUDY PAGE 

1 . Birth and Infancy 12c 

2. Growth and Preparation 59a 

3. First Disciples and Manifested Power 100a 

4. Two Wonderful Interviews 129a 

5. First Public Cures and Discourses . 149a 



Part II. Main Ministry in Galilee. 

6. Special Cases and Controversies and First Apostles 184 

7. Sermon on the Mount 213 

8. More Miracles and Beginning of Parables . . . . 221a 

9. Climax of Public Ministry 267a 

10. Training Work with the Apostles 269a 



Part III. Main Ministry in Judea and Per^a. 

11. Lessons Culminating at the Feast of Tabernacles 340 

12. Further Works and Words o f Grace at Jerusalem 381 

13. First Period of Peraean Ministry 402a 

14. Supreme Miracle of the Raising of Lazarus . 447 

15. Second Period of Peraean Ministry and Arrival at Bethany 4G6 



Part IV. Passion Week to Getksemane. 

16. Triumphal Entry and Day of Authority 492 

17. Days of Conflict and Retirement 507a 

18. Prophetic Instructions to the Apostles 556 

19. Last Supper and Gethsemane : 603 



Part V. Passion Week to the Burial. 

20. Betrayal and Trial before the Sanhedrim 642 

21. Trials before Pilate and Herod 672« 

22. Crucifixion and Burial 701 



Part VI. Forty Days and the Ascension. 

23. Resurrection and First Appearances in Judea 776a 

24. Appearances in Galilee 819a 

25. Final Appearances at Jerusalem and Ascension 852 



THE 



LIFE OF CHRIST. 



THE EARLIER YEARS OF OUR LORD'S LIFE ON 

EARTH. 



The Annunciation — Mary and Elisabeth.* 

"In the sixth month" — half a year from the time when, within the 
holy place at Jerusalem, he had stood on the right side of the altar 
of incense, and announced to the incredulous Zacharias the birth of 
the Baptist — the angel Gabriel was sent to an obscure Galilean vil- 
lage to announce a still greater birth — that of the Divine Redeemer 
of mankind. As we open, then, the first page in the history of our 
Lord's earthly life, we come at once into contact with the supernatural. 
The spirit-world unfolds itself; some of its highest inhabitants become 
palpable to sense, and are seen to take part in human affairs. In the 
old patriarchal and prophetic ages angels frequently appeared, con- 
versing with Abraham and Hagar, and Lot and Jacob; instructing 
in their ignorance, or comforting in their distress, or strengthening 
in their weakness, Joshua and Gideon, and Elijah and Daniel and 
Zechariah. Excluding, however, those instances in which it was the 
Angel of the Covenant who appeared, the cases of angelic manifesta- 
tion were comparatively rare, and lie very thinly scattered over the 
four thousand years which preceded the birth of Christ. Within the 
half century that embraced this life we have more instances of angelic 
interposition than in all the foregoing centuries of the world's history. 
At its opening and at its close angels appear as taking a special 
interest in events which had little of outward mark to distinguish 

*Luke 1:26-56. 



14 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

them. Gabriel announces to Zacharias the birth of John, to Marj 
the birth of Jesus. An angel warns Joseph in a dream to take the 
young child down to Egypt. On the night of the great birth, and for 
the first time on earth, a multitude of the heavenly host; is seen. In 
the garden of Gethsemane, an angel comes to strengthen our Lord in 
his great agony. On the morning of the resurrection, angels appear, 
now sitting, now standing, within and without the sepulchre, '-is if 
they thronged around the place where the body of the Lord had laiu 
When from the top of Olivet the cloud carried the rising Jesus out 
of the apostles' sight, two angels stand beside the apostles as they 
gaze so steadfastly up into the heavens, and foretell his second coming. 
Nor do they withdraw from human sight when the ministry of our 
Lord has closed. Mingling with the other miraculous agency where- 
by the kingdom of Christ was established and extended, theirs 
appears. An angel releases Peter, commissions Philip, instructs 
Cornelius, smites Herod, stands amid the terrors of the shipwreck 
before Paul. 

Is there aught incredible in this ? If there be indeed a world of 
spirits, and in that world Christ fills the place our faith attributes to 
him ; if in that world there be an innumerable company of angels ; if 
the great design of our Lord's visit to this earth was to redeem out 
sinful race to God, and unite us with the unfallen members of his 
great family, then it was not unnatural that those who had worship- 
ped around his throne should bend in wonder over his cradle, stand 
by his side in his deep agony, roll away the stone rejoicing from his 
sepulchre, and attend him as the everlasting doors were lifted up, 
when, triumphant over death and hell, he resumed his place in the 
eternal throne. When the Father brought his First-begotten into the 
world, the edict was, "Let all the angels of God worship him." Shall 
we wonder, then, that this worship, in one or two of its acts, should 
be made manifest to human vision, as if to tell us what an interest 
the incarnation excited, if not in the minds of men, in another and 
higher branch of the great community of spirits? From the begin- 
ning angels were interested spectators of what transpired on earth. 
When under the moulding hand of the Great Creator the present 
economy of material things was spread forth — so good, so beautiful — 
they sang together, they shouted for joy. When sin and death made 
their dark entrance, angels stood by, hailing the first beams of light 
that fell upon the darkness, welcoming the first human spirit that 
made its way into the heavenly mansions. The slow development of 
the divine purposes of mercy in the history of human redemption 
they watched with eager eye. Still closer to our earth they gathered, 



MARY AND ELISABETH. 15 

still more earnest was their gaze as the Son of the Eternal prepared 
to leave the glory he had with the Father, that he might come down 
and tabernacle as a man among us. And when the great event of his 
incarnation at last took place, it looked for a short season as if they 
were to mingle visibly in the affairs of men, and of that new kingdom 
which the Ancient of Days set up. It was the Son of God who 
brought these good angels down along with him. He has mediated 
not only between us and the Father, but between us and that elder 
branch of the great commonwealth of spirits, securing their services 
for us here, preparing us for their society hereafter. He has taught 
them to see in us that seed out of which the places left vacant by the 
first revolt in heaven are to be filled. He has taught us to see in 
them our elder brethren, to a closer and eternal fellowship with whom 
we are hereafter to be elevated. Already the interchange of kindly 
offices has commenced. Though since he himself has gone they have 
withdrawn from human vision, they have not withdrawn from earthly 
service under the Redeemer. Are they not all ministering spirits 
sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation? Who 
shall recount to us wherein that gracious ministry of theirs consists; 
who shall prove it to be a fancy, that as they waited to bear away 
the spirit of Lazarus to Abraham's bosom, they hoverjround the 
death-bed of the believer still, the tread of their footstep, the stroke 
of their wing unheard as they waft the departing spirit to its eternal 
home? 

" The angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, 
named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man, whose name was 
Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary." 
Little information is given in the gospels as to the previous history 
either of Joseph or Mary. He, we are told, was of the house of 
David, of royal lineage by direct descent; but that line now fallen 
so low that he was but a village mechanic, a carpenter. Mary, too, 
we have reason to believe, was also of the royal stock of David; yet 
in so humble a condition of life as made it natural that she should be 
betrothed to Joseph. This betrothal had taken place, and the new 
hopes it had excited agitate the youthful Mary's heart. She is alone 
in her dwelling, when, lifting up her eyes, she sees the form of the 
angel, and hears his voice say unto her: " Hail, thou that art highly 
favored, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women." To 
Zacharias he had spoken at once by name, and had proceeded with- 
out prelude to deliver the message with which he had been charged. 
He enters more reverently this humble abode at Nazareth than he had 
entered the holy place of the great temple at Jerusalem. He stands 



16 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

more leverently before this youthful maiden than before the aged 
priest. He cannot open to her his message till he has offered her 
such liomage as heavenly messenger never paid to any member of our 
race. Is it any wonder that saluted so by one who, wearing, as in 
all likelihood he did, our human form, was yet like no man she had 
ever seen, Mary should have been "troubled at his saying;" troubled 
as she felt the privacy of her seclusion thus invaded, and looked upon 
that strange, unearthly, yet most attractive form which stood before 
her ? She is not so troubled however as to hinder her from casting 
in her thoughts " what manner of salutation this should be." She 
receives the salutation in silence, with surprise, with awe, with 
thoughtful wonder. In sympathy with feelings depicted in her alarm- 
ed yet inquiring countenance, Gabriel hastens to relieve her fears 
and satisfy her curiosity. "Fear not," he says, after a brief pause 
"Fear not, Mary;" the very familiar mention of her name carrying 
with it an antidote against alarm. " Fear not, Mary ; for thou hast 
found favor with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, 
and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be 
great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest ; and the Lord God 
shall give unto him the throne of his father David : and he shall reign 
over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be 
no end." 

There was scarce a woman in Israel, in those days, who did not 
cherish it as the very highest object of desire and ambition to be the 
mother of the promised Messiah. Mary was a woman in Judah, and 
the man to whom she was betrothed belonged also to that stock from 
which the Messiah was to spring. Perhaps the hope had already 
dawned that this great honor might be in store for her. Her devout 
and thoughtful habits had made her familiar with the old prophecies 
that foretold the Messiah's advent, and with the manner in which his 
kingdom was there spoken of. Obscure and mysterious as much of 
what Gabriel said may have appeared to her, she seems at once to 
have apprehended that it was of the birth of this great Son of David 
that he was speaking. She does not ask, she seems not to have 
needed any information on that point. Nor does she hesitate to ac- 
cept as true all that Gabriel had declared. She puts indeed a ques- 
tion which, if its meaning had not been interpreted by the manner in 
which Gabriel dealt with it, and by the subsequent conduct of Mary 
herself, we might have regarded as akin to that of Zacharias; as 
indicating that she too had given way to incredulity. But hers was 
a question of curiosity not of unbelief; a question akin, not to the 
one which Zacharias put about the birth of John, but to that of 



MART AND ELISABETH. 17 

Abraham about the birth of Isaac, when he said to the angel, "Where- 
by shall I know this ?" a question implying no failure of faith, for we 
know that Abraham staggered not at the promise through unbelief) 
but expressive simply of a desire for further information, for some 
sign in confirmation of his faith. He got such a sign and rejoiced. 
And so with Mary: her question, like the patriarch's, springing not 
from the spirit of a hesitating unbelief, but from natural curiosity, 
and the wish to have the faith she felt confirmed. Her desire was 
granted. She was told that the Holy Ghost should come upon her, 
that the power of the Highest should overshadow her, that the child 
afterwards to be born was now miraculously to be conceived. And 
as a sign, this piece of information, new to her we may believe, was 
given, that her relative, the aged Elisabeth, was also to have a son. 
Her question having been answered, and the manner of the great 
event so far revealed as to throw her back simply on the promise and 
power of God, Mary says: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it 
unto me according to thy word." What a contrast here between 
Zacharias and Mary! The aged priest had been taught from child- 
hood in one of the schools of the prophets, and must have been 
familiar with all those narratives and prophecies which might have 
prepared him to believe, and he had besides the experience of years 
to give power to his trust in God. Mary was of humbler parentage ; 
her opportunities of instruction but meagre compared with his; hers 
too was the season of inexperienced youth ; her faith was as yet un- 
fortified by trial. What he was asked to believe was unlikely indeed, 
and altogether unlooked for, yet not beyond the power of nature. 
What she is asked to believe is a direct miraculous forthputting of the 
great power of God. Yet the old priest staggers, while the young 
maiden instantly confides. 

In Mary's immediate and entire belief of the angel's word, a far 
greater confidence in God was shown than could have been shown by 
Zacharias, even had he received Gabriel's message as she did, with- 
out a suspicion or a doubt. She who, being betrothed, proved un- 
faithful, was, by the law of Moses, sentenced to be stoned to death; 
and though that law had now fallen into disuse, or was but seldom 
literally executed, yet she who was deemed guilty of such a crime 
stood exposed to the loss of character, and became the marked object 
of public opprobrium. Mary could not fail at once to perceive, and 
to be sensitive to the misconceptions and the perils which she would 
certainly incur. She might, in self-vindication, relate what Gabriel 
had told her, but how many would believe her word? What voucher 
could she give that it was actually a heavenly messenger she had 

Life of Christ. 2 



18 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

seen, and that what he had said was true? Many a distressing feaj 
as to the future — as to the treatment she might receive from Joseph 
the calumnies, the shame, the scorn to which from other quarters shf 
inight be exposed — might have arisen, if not to check her faith, yet 
to hold her own acquiescence in the will of God in timid and trem 
bling suspense ; but, strong in the simplicity and fulness of her trust 
she puts all fears away, and committing herself into the hands of him 
whose angel she believes Gabriel to be, she says, " Behold the hand- 
maid of the Lord ; be it unto me according to thy word." 

Let us notice one other element in Mary's faith : its humility, its 
complete freedom from that undue thought of self which so often 
taints the faith of the most believing. Wonderful as the announce- 
ment is, that a child born of her should, by such miraculous concep- 
tion as Gabriel had spoken of, be the Son of the Highest, should be 
a king sitting on the throne of David — his kingdom one that should 
outrival David's, of which there never should be an end — Mary har- 
bors no doubt, raises no question, thinks not, speaks not of her own 
unworthiness to have such honor conferred on her, or of her unfit- 
ness to be the mother of such a child. As if one so unworthy of the 
least of God's mercies had no right or title to question his doings, 
however great a gift it pleased him to confer, she sinks all thought 
of self in thought of him, and says, "Behold the handmaid of the 
Lord; be it unto me according to thy word." A finer instance of 
simple, humble, childlike, unbroken trust, we shall scarcely find in 
any record human or divine. "Blessed," let us say with her cousin 
Elisabeth, "is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of 
those things which were told her from the Lord." " Thou hast found 
favor," said Gabriel to her, " with God." It is possible to interpret 
that saying without any reference to Mary's character ; to rest in the 
explanation, which is no doubt so far true, that it was God's good 
pleasure to select out of all the maidens of Israel this Mary of Naza- 
reth, to be the most honored of the daughters of Eve. But if it be 
true, as we are elsewhere taught, that to him that hath it is given; 
that it is done unto every one according to his faith ; that to him that 
believeth, all things are possible; if all the recorded experience of 
God's people confirms these general sayings of the divine word — are 
we wrong in considering the high honor conferred by God on Mary 
as a striking exemplification of the principle of adapting the gift to 
the character and capacity of the receiver? 

His errand accomplished, Gabriel withdrew; and after the brief 
and exciting interview, Mary was left in solitude to her own thoughts. 
The words she had so lately heard kept ringing in her ears. She 



MARY AND ELISABETH. 19 

tried to enter more and more into their meaning. As she did so, into 
what a tumult of wonder, and awe, and hope, must she have been 
thrown! She longs for some one with whom she can converse, td 
whom she may unburden her full mind and heart. There is no one 
ioar to whom she can or dare lay open all her secret thoughts; but 
she remembers now what Gabriel had told her about her kinswoman 
Elisabeth, who may well be intrusted with the secret, for she too has 
been placed in something like the same condition. Eager for sym- 
pathy, thirsting for companionship and full communion of the heart, 
she arises in haste, and departs for the distant residence of her cousin, 
who lives amid the far-off hills of Judah. It is a long — for one so 
young and so unprotected, it might be a perilous journey ; nearly the 
whole length of the land — at least a hundred miles to traverse. But 
what is distance, what are dangers" to one so lifted up with the exalted 
hopes to which she has been begotten ! The hundred miles are quickly 
trodden ; joy and hope make the long distance short. She reaches 
at last the house in which Elisabeth resides, and, with all due respect — 
such as is due from the inferior in station, the junior in years — she 
Balutes the wife of the venerable priest. How filled with wonder 
must she have been, when, instead of the ordinary return to her sal- 
utation, Elisabeth breaks forth at once with the exclamation, " Blessed 
art thou among women;" the very words which the angel had so 
lately spoken in her astonished ear; "blessed is the fruit of thy 
womb." She need not tell her secret ; it is already known. What a 
fresh warrant this for the truth of all that Gabriel had said ! It comes 
to confirm a faith already strong, but which might, perhaps, other- 
wise have begun to falter. It did not waver in the angel's presence ; 
but had month after month gone by, with no one near to share her 
thoughts or build her up in her first trust, might not that trust have 
yielded to human weakness and shown some symptom of decay? 
Well-timed, then, the kindly aid which the strange greeting of hei 
cousin brought with it, supplying a new evidence that there should 
indeed be a performance of all those things which were told her of 
the Lord. 

" And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should 
come to me?" If in Mary we have one of the rarest exhibitions of 
humility towards God, of entire acquiescence in his will, in Elisabeth 
we have as rare and beautiful an instance of humility towards others, 
the entire absence of all selfish, proud, and envious feelings. Elisabeth 
leaves out of sight all the outer distinctions between herself and her 
bumble relative, forgets the difference of age and rank, recognises at 
once, and ungrudgingly, the far higher distinction which had boeD 



SO THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

conferred by God upon Mary, and wonders even at the fact that to 
such a home as hers the honored mother of her Lord should come. 
But now the same spirit which had enlightened her eyes, and filled 
her heart, and opened her lips to give such a greeting to her cousin, 
comes in still fuller measure upon Mary, and to the wonderful saluta- 
tion she gives the still more wonderful response in that strain of rapt 
and rhythmical praise which the holy catholic church has ever treas- 
ured as the first and fullest of our Christian hymns. 

It divides itself into two parts. Rising at once to God as the 
source of all her blessings, her soul and all that was within her being 
stirred up to bless him, she celebrates, in lofty strains of praise, the 
Lord's goodness to herself individually. " My soul doth magnify the 
Lord." The Lord had magnified her, by his goodness had made her 
great, and she will magnify the Lord. The larger his gift to her, the 
larger the glory she will render to his great name. " My spirit hath 
rejoiced in God my Saviour." She hails the coming Saviour, as one 
needed by her as by all sinners, and embraces him, though her own 
son according to the flesh, as her God and Saviour ; glorying more in 
the connection that she has with him in common with the entire mul- 
titude of the redeemed, than in that special maternal relationship in 
which she has the privilege to stand to him. Royal though her line- 
age, hers had been a low estate; her family poor in Judah; she 
among the least in her father's house ; but in his great grace and in- 
finite condescension the Lord had stooped to raise her from the dust, 
to set her upon a pinnacle of honor, and gratefully and gladly will 
she acknowledge the hand that did it. "For he hath regarded the 
low estate of his handmaiden." And how high had he exalted her! 
The angel had called her blessed at Nazareth. Elisabeth, in the city 
of Judah, had repeated his saying ; but Mary herself rises to the full 
conception and full acknowledgment of the honor the Lord had put 
upon her: "For, behold," she says, "from henceforth, all generations 
dhall call me blessed." But it fills her with no pride, it prompts to 
no undue familiarity with God, or with his great name. She knows 
to whom to attribute this and every other gift and grace, and in tne 
fulness of a devout and grateful reverence, she adds: "He that w 
mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name." 

So much about herself and all that the Lord had done for her; 
but now she widens the embrace of her thanksgiving and praise, and 
losing all sense of her individuality, her virgin lips are touched with 
fire, and as poetess and prophetess of the infant church she pours 
forth the first triumphal song which portrays the general character oi 
the gospel kingdom then to be ushered in. 



THE NATIVITY. 2l 

In these strains there breathed the spirit at once of the Baptist 
and of Christ ; of the two children of the two mothers who stood now 
face to face saluting one another. It is the voice of him who cried in 
the wilderness, " Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in 
ih 3 desert a highway for our God : every valley shall be exalted, and 
every hill shall be made low; and the crooked shall be made straight, 
and the rough places plain ; and the glory of the Lord shall be n>- 
vealed." It is the voice of him who opened his mouth on the moun- 
tain side of Galilee, and said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for 
theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek: for they 
shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst 
after righteousness: for they shall be filled." Do we not recognise 
the very spirit of the ministries both of John and of Jesus in the words • 
"He hath showed strength with his ami: he hath scattered the proud 
in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty 
from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the 
hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away. 
He hath holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy ; as 
he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever." 



II. 

The Nativity. 



It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to decide whether it was before 
or after her visit to Elisabeth, that Joseph was made acquainted with 
the condition of his betrothed. It must have thrown him into pain- 
fid perplexity. He was not prepared at first to put implicit faith in 
her narrative, but neither was he prepared utterly to discredit it. 
To put her publicly away by a bill of divorce would have openly 
stamped her character with shame, and branded her child with infa- 
my. He was unwilling that either of these injuries should be inflict- 
ed. To put her away privily would at least so far cover her reputa- 
tion that the child might still be regarded as his; and this he had 
generously resolved to do, when the angel of the Lord appeared to 
him hi a dream, removed all his doubts, and led him to take Mary as 
his wife. This difficulty overcome, Mary was quietly awaiting at 
Nazareth the expected birth. But it was not at Nazareth that the 
Messiah was to be born. An ancient prophecy had already designated 
another village, not in Galilee, but in Judea, as the destined birth' 

• Luke 2 : 1-20. 



22 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

place. " But thou, Bethleheni Ephratah" — so had the prophet Micah 
spoken seven hundred years before — "though thou be little among 
the thousands of Judah, jet out of thee shall he come forth unto me 
that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of 
old, from everlasting." To this village of Bethlehem Mary was fcc 
be guided at such a time as should secure the fulfilment of the 
prophecy. 

A singular instrumentality was employed to gain this end. The 
Roman empire had now stretched its dominion to its widest limits, 
its power extending from the Euphrates to the British islands — from 
the Northern ocean to the borders of Ethiopia. Amid the prevalence 
of universal peace, the emperor, judging it a fit opportunity to ascer- 
tain by accurate statistics the population and resources of the different 
provinces of his dominions, issued an edict that a general census of 
the empire should be taken. It gratified his pride ; it would be use- 
ful afterwards for many purposes of government, such as determining 
the taxes that might be imposed, or the levies that might be drawn 
from the different provinces. This edict of Augustus came to be 
executed in Judea. That country was not yet, in the outward form 
of its government, reduced to the condition of a Roman province ; but 
Herod, while nominally an independent king, was virtually a Roinar 
subject, and had to obey this as well as the other edicts of the em- 
peror. In doing so, however, Herod followed the Jewish usage, and 
issued his instructions that every family should repair forthwith to 
the seat of his tribe, where its genealogical records were kept. The 
distinction of inheritance among the Jews had long been lost, but the 
listinction of families and tribes were still preserved, and Herod 
grounded upon that distinction the prescribed mode of registration 
or enrolment. Joseph and Mary, being both of the house and lineage 
of David, were obliged to repair to Bethlehem. 

The manner in which the power of the Roman empire was thus 
employed to determine the birthplace of our Lord, naturally invites 
us to reflect upon the singular conjunction of outward circumstances, 
the strange timing of events that then took place. Embracing the 
whole sphere of reflection which thus opens to our view, let us, before 
fixing our attention upon the incidents of the particular nairative now 
before us, dwell for a little on the Divine wisdom that was displayed 
in fixing upon that particular epoch in the world's history as the one 
in which Jesus was born, and lived, and died. "When," says the 
inspired apostle, " the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth 
his Son, made of a woman, made under the law." The expression 
used here, " the fulness of the time." evidently implies not only that 



THE NATIVIT1. 23 

there was a set time appointed beforehand of the Father, but that a 
series of preparatory steps were prearranged, the accomplishment of 
which had, as it were, to be waited for, ere the season best suited for 
the earthly advent of our Lord arrived. Some peculiar fitness must 
Ihen have marked the time of Christ's appearance in this world. We 
are inclined to wonder that his appearance should have been so long 
delayed. Looking at all the mighty issues that hung suspended on 
his advent, we are apt at times to be surprised that so many thousand 
years should have been suffered to elapse ere the Son of God came 
down to save us; and yet, could the whole plan and counsels of the 
Deity be laid open to our eye, we cannot but believe that as there 
were the best and weightiest reasons why his coming should be defer- 
red so long, there were also the best and weightiest reasons why it 
should be deferred no longer. To attempt on either side the state- 
ment of these reasons would be to attempt to penetrate within the 
veil that hides from us the secret things of God. Taking up, however, 
the history of the world as it is actually before us, it can neither be 
unsafe nor presumptuous to consider the actual and obvious benefits 
which have attended the coming of the Saviour at that particular 
period when it happened. 

In the first place, we can readily enough perceive that it hag 
served greatly to enhance the number and the force of the evidences 
in favor of the Divine origin and authority of his mission. Two of 
the chief outer pillars upon which the fabric of Christianity as a rev- 
elation from Heaven rests, are prophecy and miracles. But if Christ 
had come in the earliest ages ; had the Incarnation followed quickly 
upon the Fall, so far as that coming was concerned there had been 
no room or scope for prophecy — one great branch of the Christian 
evidences had been cut off. As it now is, when we take up that long 
line of predictions, extending over more than three thousand years, 
from the first dim intimation that the seed of the woman should bruise 
the head of the serpent, down to the last prophecy of Malachi, that 
the Lord, whom the Jews sought, should come suddenly to his temple 
as the Messenger of the Covenant, whom they delighted in ; when we 
mark the growing brightness and fulness that characterize each suc- 
ceeding prediction, as feature after feature in the life and character of 
the great Messiah is added to the picture; when we compare the 
actual events with the passages in those ancient writings, in which 
they were repeatedly foretold, what a strong confirmation is given 
thereby to our faith, that He, of whom all those things had been 
spoken so long beforehand, was indeed the Christ, the Son of the 
living God. How much, then, in regard to prophecy, should we have 



24 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

lost, had the interval between the Fall and the Incarnation not been 
long enough for that wonderful series of prophecies to be interposed 

Even as to the miracles we should have been put to great and se* 
rious disadvantage. Our faith in the reality of these miracles rests 
upon human testimony. That testimony is embodied in the writings 
of the apostles and their contemporaries. Those writings were issued 
at an advanced stage in the history of the world. They have come 
down to us through the same channel — they come, accompanied with 
the same vouchers for their authenticity — with a vast mass of othei 
ancient writings, whose genuineness and credibility no one has ever 
denied. Our belief in the miracles of Jesus is thus bound up with 
our belief in a large portion of ancient history, for our knowledge of 
which we are indebted to writings of equal and greater antiquity than 
those of the New Testament. If we renounce the one, we must, in all 
fairness, renounce the other also. We must blot out all that is 
alleged to have happened in the world from this date upwards. It 
has been of the greatest possible service in the defence of Christianity 
against the attack of scholarly men s that the life of Jesus Christ, re- 
corded in the four gospels, forms part and parcel of so large a portion 
of the preserved literature of antiquity — written, as it were, with the 
same ink, published at the same time, preserved in the same manner, 
so that together they must stand or together fall. How should it 
have stood, if, instead of being as it is, those miracles of Christ had 
been wrought far back in the world's history; the record of them 
written at some period preceding that from which any other authentic 
narrative had come down to us, some centuries before the date of the 
first acknowledged book of common history? Who does not perceive 
to what exceptions, just or unjust, they would, in consequence, have 
been exposed? Who does not perceive that, fixing his eye upon the 
barbarous and fabulous age in which the record originated, and upon 
the longer and more perilous passage that it had made, with some 
show at least of reason, with some apparent ground for the distinc- 
tion, other ancient histories might have been received, and yet this 
one rejected? We have to thank God then for the wisdom of that 
order of things whereby, in consequence of the particular time at 
which Christ appeared, our faith in him as the heaven-sent Saviour 
rests upon the same solid basis with our faith in the best accredited 
facts of common history. 

We can discern another great and beneficial purpose that wag 
served by the appearance of Christ at so late a period. The world 
was left for a long while to itself, to make full proof of its capabilities 
and dispositions. Many great results it realized. There were coiin 



THE NATIVITY. 25 

tries unvisited by any light from heaven, upon which the sun of civil- 
ization rose and shone with no mean lustre ; where the intellect of 
man acted as vigorously as it has ever done on earth ; where all the 
arts and refinements of life were brought to the highest state of cul- 
ture; where taste and imagination revelled amid the choicest objectg 
of gratification ; where, in poetry and in painting, and in sculpture 
and in architecture, specimens of excellence were furnished which re- 
main to this day the models that we strive to imitate. Was nothing 
gained by allowing Egypt, Greece, and Eome to run out their full 
career of civilization, while the light from heaven was confined mean- 
while to the narrow limits of Judea? Was nothing gained by its 
being made no longer a matter of speculation but a matter of fact, 
that man may rise in other departments, but in religion will not, left 
un aided, rise to God; that he may make great progress in other kinds 
of knowledge, but make no progress in the knowledge of his Maker; 
that he may exercise his intellect, regale his fancy, refine his taste, 
correct his manners, but will not, cannot purify his heart ? For what 
was the actual state of matters in those countries unblest by revela- 
tion? We have the description drawn by an unerring hand: "They 
became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was dark- 
ened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and 
changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like 
to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping 
things ; who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and 
served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever." 
We should have lost that exhibition of the greatest refinement coupled 
with the grossest idolatry, had the light of Kevelation mingled uni- 
versally from the first with the light of ordinary civilization. 

Let us look a little more closely at the condition of Judea rela- 
tively to the Eoman Empire at the time of our Lord's birth and death. 
It was owing, as we have already mentioned, to Herod's being nomi- 
nally a sovereign but virtually a subject, that the order for registra- 
tion came to be executed in Palestine which forced Mary from Naza- 
reth to Bethlehem. Is there nothing impressive in seeing the power 
of Home thus interposed to determine the Kedeemer's birthplace ; the 
pride and policy of the world's great monarchy employed as an instru- 
ment for doing what the hand and counsel of the Lord had deter- 
mined beforehand to be done? But even that nominal kingdom 
which Herod enjoyed soon passed from his family. A few years afto* 
the birth of Christ, Archelaus, who reigned in Judea in the room oi 
his father Herod, was deposed and banished. Judea had then a 
Koman governor placed over it. Still, however, whether through 



26 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

respect to its banished princes, or some latent reverence for its temple 
and ancient laws, the old national and priestly authorities were suf- 
fered to continue and enjoy some part of their old power and privi- 
leges. It was an anomalous and short-lived state of things ; a Jewish 
law and Jewish officers, under a Eoman law and Roman officers : the 
two fitted into each other by certain limits being assigned to the in- 
ferior or Jewish judicatories which they were not permitted to over- 
pass. To no Jewish court, not even to the highest, the Sanhedrim, 
was the power of inflicting capital punishment intrusted ; and it was 
wholly owing to that peculiar and temporary adjustment that all the 
formality of an orderly trial, and all the publicity of a legal execution 
was stamped upon the closing scenes of the Saviour's life. Had Jesus 
Christ appeared one half-century earlier, or one half-century later than 
he did ; had he appeared when the Jewish authorities had uncheck- 
ed power, how quickly, how secretly had their deadly malice dis- 
charged itself upon his head ! No cross had been raised on Calvary. 
Had he come a few years later, when the Jews were stripped even of 
that measure of power they for a short season enjoyed, would the 
Roman authorities, then the only ones in the land, of their own mo- 
tion have condemned and crucified him? Even as it was, it was im- 
possible to persuade Pilate that Jesus was either a rival whom Ca?sar 
had any reason to fear, or a rebel whom it became him to punish. 
Why then was the rule over Judea at this time in the hands of Rome? 
and why was that power induced to treat Judea for a time so differ- 
ently from her other subject provinces? Why, but that she might 
be standing there ready, when Christ fell into the hands of his exas- 
perated countrymen, to extricate him from that grasp under which in 
darkness he might have perished; and, though she too denied him 
justice, yet by her weak and vacillating governor, that hers might be 
the voice proclaiming aloud his innocence ; hers the hand to erect the 
cross, and lift it up so high that the eyes of all the nations and all the 
ages might behold it. 

But let us now turn to the narrative of our Redeemer's birth. 
JTien Mary was at first informed that Joseph and she must go to 
Bethlehem, perhaps she shrunk from so long a journey, lingered to 
the last ere she entered on it, and took it slowly. She was late at 
least in her arrival at the village. The inn, we may well suppose the 
single one that so small a place afforded for the entertainment of 
si rangers,* was crowded. She had to take the only accommodation 

° The inn or khan was frequently in the earliest times the house of the sheikh 
jr chief man of the place. A very interesting resume of all the historical notices 
b£ the inn or khan of Bethlehem is given in the Atkenceum for December 26, 



THE NATIVITY. 27 

thai the place afforded. Adopting here the early tradition of the 
chiueh, as reported by Justin Martyr, who was born about a century 
afterwards, and within fifty miles from Bethlehem, let us say, she had 
to go into one of the caves or grottos in the rock common in the 
neighborhood, connected with the inn. There, where the camels an; 3 
the asses had their stalls; there, far away from home and friends 
among strangers all too busy to care for her; amid all the rude ex- 
posure and confusion of the place, Mary brought forth her first-bora 
son, and when her hour was over, having swathed him with her own 
weak hands, laid him in a manger. 

A very lowly mode of entering upon human life : nothing what 
ever to dignify, every thing to degrade. Yet the night of that won- 
derful birth was not to pass by without bearing upon its bosom a 
bright and signal witness of the greatness of the event. Sloping 
down from the rocky ridge on which Bethlehem stood, there lay some 
giassy fields, where all that night long some shepherds watched theii 
flocks; humble, faithful, industrious men; men, too, of whom we are 
persuaded that, Simeon-like, they were waiting for the Consolation oJ 
Israel; who had simpler and more spiritual notions of their Messiah 
than most of the w 7 ell-taught scribes of the metropolis. They would 
not have understood the angel's message so well; they would not 
have believed it so readily; they would not have hastened so quick, j 
to Bethlehem; they would not have bent with such reverence over so 
humble a cradle; they would not have made known abroad what had 
been told them concerning this child — made it known as a thing in 
which they themselves most heartily believed — had they not been 
devout, believing men. Under the starry heavens, along the lonely 
hill-sides, these shepherds are keeping their watch, thinking perhaps 
of the time when these very sheep-walks were trodden by the young 
son of Jesse, or remembering some ancient prophecy that told of the 
coming of one who was to be David's son and David's Lord. Sud- 
denly the angel of the Lord comes upon them, the glory of the Lord 
encompasses them with a girdle of light brighter than the mid-day 
sun could have thrown around them. They fear as they see that 
form, and as they are encircled by that glory, but their alarm is in- 
stantly dispelled. "Fear not," says the angel, "for, behold, I bring 
you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto 
you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ 
the Lord." Mary had been told that her child was to be called 

1863, which makes it more than probable that the place oi Christ's birth waa 
close to, if not within, the very house to which Boaz conducted Ruth, an i in 
Which Samuel anointed David king. 



28 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Jesus, that he was to be great, to be son of the Highest, the heir to 
his father David's throne, the head of an everlasting monarchy. 
Joseph had been told that he was to call the child born of Mary, 
Jesus, for he was to save his people from their sins— a simpler and 
less Jewish description of his office. The angel speaks of him to 
: iiese shepherds in still broader and sublimer terms. Unto them and 
anto all people this child was to be born, and unto them and unto all 
he was to be a Saviour, Christ the Lord, the only instance in which 
the double epithet, Christ the Lord, is given in this form to him. A 
universal, a divine Messiahship was to be his. 

The shepherds ask no sign, as Zacharias and Mary had done; ye I 
they got one: "And this," said the angel, "shall be a sign unto you: 
Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying iu a 
manger. But one such child, born that night, wrapped up in such 
a way, lying in such a place, could so small a village as Bethlehem 
supply. That village lay but a mile or so from the spot they stood 
on; the sign could speedily be verified. But they have something 
more to see and hear ere their visit to the village is paid. The voice 
of that single angel has scarce died away in the silence of the night- 
lost in wonder they are still gazing on his radiant form — when sud 
denly a whole multitude of the heavenly host bursts upon their aston- 
ished vision, hiring the illuminated heavens. Human eyes never saw 
before or since so large a company of the celestial inhabitants hover- 
ing in our earthly skies ; and human ears never heard before or since 
such a glorious burst of heavenly praise as those angels then poured 
forth — couching it in Hebrew speech, then native tongue for the time 
foregone, that these listening shepherds may catch up at once the 
cradle-hymn that heaven now chants over the new-born Saviour; 
that these shepherds may repeat it to the men of their own genera- 
tion ; that from age to age it may be handed down, and age after ago 
may take it up as supplying the fittest terms in which to celebrate 
the Kedeemer's birth — " Glory to God in the highest ; on earth peace, 
good will towards men." 

At the moment when these words first saluted human ears, what 
a contrast did they open up between earth and heaven! As that 
babe was born in Bethlehem, this world lay around him in silence, in 
darkness, in ignorant unconcern. But all heaven was moved ; for s 
l&rge as that company of angels was which the shepherds saw, what 
were they to the thousands that encircle the throne of the Eternal ! 
And the song of praise the shepherds heard, what was it to the voice, 
as of many waters, which rose triumphant around that throne ! That 
little dropping of its praise committed for human use to human keep- 



THE NATIVITY. 29 

ing, heaven hastily veiled itself again from human vision. The whole 
angelic manifestation passed rapidly away. The shepherds are startled 
in then* midnight rounds ; a flood of glory pours upon them ; their 
eyes are dazzled with those forms of light ; their ears are full of that 
thrilling song of praise; suddenly the glory is gone; the shining 
forms have vanished; the stars look down as before through the 
darkness; they are left to a silent, unspeakable wonder and awe. 
They soon, however, collect their thoughts, and promptly resolve to 
go at once into the village. They go in haste; the sign is verified; 
they find Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in the manger. They 
justify their intrusion by telling all that they had just seen and 
heard; and amid the sorrows and humiliations of that night, how 
cheering to Mary the strange tidings that they bring! Having told 
these, they bend with rude yet holy reverence over the place where 
the infant Saviour lies, and go their way to finish their night-watch 
among the hills, and then for all their life long afterwards to repeat 
to wondering listeners the story of that birth. With those shepherds 
let us bend for a moment or two over the place where the infant 
Redeemer lay, to meditate on one or two of the lessons which it is 
fitted to suggest. 

By the manner of his entrance into this world, Christ hath digni- 
fied the estate of infancy, has hallowed the bond which binds tha 
mother to her new-born child. He, the great Son of God, stooped to 
assume our humanity. He might have done so at once ; taken it ok 
him in its manhood form. The second Adam might have stood forth 
like the first, no childhood passed through. Why did he become an 
infant before he was a man ? Was it not, among other reasons which 
may suggest themselves, that he might consecrate that first of human 
ties, that earliest estate of human life ? The grave, we say, has been 
hallowed — has not the cradle also — by Christ's having lain in it ? 

By the humiliation of his birth, he stripped the estate of poverty 
of all reproach. Of all who have ever been born into this world, he 
was the only one with whom it was a matter of choice in what condi- 
tion he should appear. The difference, indeed, between our highest 
and our lowest — between a chamber in a palace, and a manger in a 
stable — could have been but slight to him ; yet he chose to be bom 
in the stable, and to be laid in the manger. And that first stage oif 
his earthly life was in keeping with all that followed. For thirty 
years he depended on his own or others' labor for his daily bread 
for three years more, he was a houseless, homeless man, with no pro 
vision but that which the generosity of others supplied: "The t'oxea 
had holes, and the birds of the ah* had nests; but he had not where 



30 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

to lay his head." And has not that life of his redeemed poverty from 
all disgrace ; has it not lifted it to honor ? 

As we bend in wonder over the infant Saviour, we learn the dif- 
ference between the inferior and higher forms of an earthly greatness. 
On that night when Christ was born, what a difference was there in 
all outward marks of distinction, between that child of the Hebrew 
mother as he lay in his lowly cradle, and the Augustus Caesar whose 
edict brought Mary to Bethlehem, as he reposed in his imperial 
palace ! And throughout the lifetimes of the two there was but little 
to lessen that distinction. The name of the one was known and hon- 
ored over the whole civilized globe: the name of the other scarce 
heard of beyond the narrow bounds of Judea. And when repeated 
there, it was too often as a byword and a reproach. How stands it 
now ? The throne of the Caesars, the throne of mere human authority 
and power, has perished. That name, at which nations trembled, 
carries no power over the spirits of men. But the empire of Jesus, 
the empire of pure, undying, self-sacrificing love, will never perish; 
its sway over the conscience and hearts of men, as the world grows 
older becomes ever wider and stronger. His name shall be honored 
while sun and moon endure ; men shall be blessed in him ; all nations 
shall call him blessed. This world owes an infinite debt to him, were 
It for nothing else than this, that he has so exalted the spiritual 
ibove the material ; the empire of love above the empire of power. 

Again we bend over this infant as he lies in that manger at Beth- 
lehem, and as we do so, strange scenes in his after life rise upon our 
memory. Those little, tender feet, unable to sustain the infant frame, 
are yet to tread upon the roughened waters of a stormy lake, as men 
tread the solid earth. At the touch of that little, feeble hand, the 
blind eye is to open, and the tied tongue to be unloosed, and diseases 
of all kinds are to take wings and flee away. That soft, weak voice, 
whose gentle breathings in his infant slumbers can scarce be heard, 
is to speak to the winds and the waves, and they shall obey it ; is to 
summon the dead from the sepulchre, and they shall come forth. 
Who then, and what was he, whose birth the angels celebrated in 
such high strains ? None other than he of whom Isaiah, anticipating 
the angels, had declared: "Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is 
given ; and the government shall be upon his shoulder : and his name 
shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The ever- 
lasting Father, The Prince of Peace." It was He, the Word, who 
iras from the beginning with God and who was God, who was thus 
made flesh and came to dwell among us. This is, in truth, the cen- 
tral fact or doctrine of our religion; the mystery of mysteries; tho 



THE PEESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE. 31 

one great miracle of divine, everlasting love. Admit it, and all the 
other wonders of the Saviour's life become not only easy of belief — 
they appear but the natural and suitable incidents of such a historj 
as his. Deny it, and the whole gospel narrative becomes an inex< 
plicable enigma. The very heart of its meaning taken out of it, yon 
may try to turn it into a myth or fable if you please ; but a credible 
story it no longer is. No; not credible even in that part of it into 
frhieh nothing of the supernatural enters. Christ was either what he 
claimed to be, and what all those miraculous attestations conspire to 
establish that he was; he was either one with the Father, knowing 
the Father as the Father knew him, doing whatever the Father did— 
so direct and full a revelation of the Father that it could be truly 
said that he who had seen him had seen the Father likewise ; 01 
his character for simplicity and honesty and truthfulness stands im- 
peached, and the whole fabric of Christianity is overturned. 

Let those angels teach us in what light we should regard the birth 
of Christ, the advent of the Redeemer. They counted it as glad 
tidings of great joy that they gave forth when they announced that 
birth; they broke forth together in exulting praises over it, as glori- 
fying God in the highest, as proclaiming peace on earth, as indi* 
eating good will towards men. In that good will of God to us in Christ 
lot us heartily believe; into that peace with God secured to us in 
Christ let us humbly and gratefully enter. Those glad tidings oi 
great joy let us so receive as that they shall make us joyful, that so 
Christ may be glorified in us on earth, and we be glorified with him 
throughout eternity. 



III. 

The Presentation in the Temple.* 

On the eighth day after his birth Christ was circumcised : the 
visible token of his being one of the seed of Abraham according tc 
the flesh was thus imposed. In his case, indeed, this rite could not 
have that typical or spiritual meaning which in all other cases it bore. 
It could point to no spiritual defilement needing to be removed. But 
though on that ground exemption might have been claimed for him. 
on other grounds it became him in this as in other respects to fulfij 
the requirements of the Jewish law. From the earliest period, from 
thj& first institution of the rite, it had been the Jewish custom to give 

* Luke 2 : 21-38. 



o2 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

its name to the child on the occasion of its circumcision. The angel, 
indeed, who had appeared to Zacharias and to Mary, had in each 
instance announced beforehand what the names of the two children 
were to be. These however were not formally imposed till the day 
of their circumcision. In the Baptist's case there was a large assem- 
blage of relations and friends upon that day; and springing out oi 
the peculiar condition of the father, the naming of John was attended 
with such striking circumstances, that the fame of them was noised 
abroad throughout all the hill Gountry of Judea. At Bethlehem 
Joseph and Mary were too far away from all their kindred to call 
any assemblage of them together. In their humbler position they 
might not have done it, even had they been resident at the time in 
Nazareth. Quietly, privately, obscurely, they circumcised their child, 
and gave to liim the name of Jesus, that name so rich in meaning, so 
full of promise. 

Forty days after the birth of Jesus, Joseph and Mary carried the 
infant up to Jerusalem. There was a double object in this visit. 
Mary had to present the offering which the Jewish law required at 
the hands of every mother when the days of her purification were 
accomplished. This offering, in the case of all whose circumstances 
enabled them to present it, was to consist of a lamb of the first year 
Cor a burnt-offering, and a young pigeon or a turtle-dove for a sin- 
offering. With that consideration for the poor which marks so manj 
of the Mosaic ordinances, it was provided that if the mother were not 
able to furnish a lamb, a pair of turtle-doves or two young pigeons 
were to be accepted, the one for the burnt-offering, and the other for 
the sin-offering. That such was the offering which Joseph and Mary 
presented to the priest, carried with it an unmistakable evidence of 
the poverty of then estate. Besides discharging this duty, Mary had 
at the same time to dedicate her inf ant son as being a first-born clnld 
to the Lord, and to pay the small sum fixed as the price of his re- 
demption. 

There were few more common, few less noticeable sights than the 
one witnessed that forenoon within the temple when Christ's presen- 
tation as a first-born child took place. It happened every day that 
mothers brought their children to be in this way dedicated and re- 
deemed. It was part of the daily routine work of the priest-in-wait- 
ing to take their payments, to hold up the children before the altar, 
to enroll their names in the register of the first-born, and so to com- 
plete the dedication; a work which from its commonness he went 
through without giving much attention either to parents or to child, 
unless indeed there was something special in their rank, or their 



THE PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE. 33 

appearance, or their offerings. But here there was nothing of this 
kind. A poor man and woman, in humblest guise, with humblest 
offerings, present themselves before him. The woman holds out her 
first-born babe ; he takes, presents, enrolls, and hands it back to her; 
all seems over, and what is there in so common, plain, and simple an 
old Jewish custom worthy of any particular notice? We shall be 
able to answer that question better, by considering for a moment 
what this rite of the dedication of the first-born among the Israel- 
ites really meant, especially as applied to this first-born, to this child 
Jesus. 

When Moses first got his commission from the Lord in Midian, 
and was told to go and work out the great deliverance of his people 
from their Egyptian bondage, the last instruction he received was 
this: "And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord, Israel 
is my son, even my first-born. And I say unto thee, Let my son go, 
that he may serve me : and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I 
will slay thy son, even thy first-born." Exod. 4 : 22, 23. As a mother 
reclaims her infant from the hands of a cruel nurse, as a father 
reclaims his son from the hands of a severe and capricious school- 
master, so the Lord reclaimed his son, his first-born Israel, from the 
hands of Pharaoh. But the king's haughty answer to the demand 
was : " Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice to let Israel 
go?" Sign after sign was shown, wonder after wonder wrought, woe 
after woe inflicted, but the spirit of the proud king remained unbro- 
ken. At last, all lesser instruments having failed, the sword was put 
into the hands of the destroying angel, and he was sent forth to exe- 
cute that foretold doom, which — meant to strike at the very heart of 
the entire community of Egypt — fell actually only upon the first-born 
in every family. The nation was taken as represented by these its 
first and best. In their simultaneous death on that terrible night, 
Egypt throughout all its borders was smitten. But the first-born of 
Israel was saved, and through them, as representatives of the whole 
body of the people, all Israel was saved; saved, yet not without 
blood, not without the sacrifice of the lamb, for every household had 
the sprinkling of its shed blood upon the lintel and door-post. It 
was to preserve and perpetuate the memory of this judgment and this 
mercy, this smiting and this shielding, this doom and this deliverance, 
that the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, " Sanctify unto me all the 
fir3t-born, both of man and beast ; it is mine : for on the day that I 
smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt, I hallowed unto me all 
the first-born in Israel ; mine they shall be : I am the Lord. And it 
shall be, when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What is 



Uf» of Chrtat. 



$i THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

this? that thou shalt say unto him, By strength of hatid the Lord 
brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage : and it came 
to pass, when Pharaoh would hardly let us go, that the Lord slew all 
the first-bom in the land of Egypt, both the first-born of man and 
the first-born of beast: therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all that open- 
eth the matrix, being males ; but all the first-born of my children I 
redeem." Exod. 13 : 1 ; Numb. 3 : 13 ; Exocl. 13 : 14, 15. During the 
earlier and simpler patriarchal economy, the first-born in every fam- 
ily was also its priest. Had that rule been followed when the twelve 
tribes were organized into the Theocracy, the first-born invested with 
a double sacredness, as peculiarly the redeemed of the Lord, would 
have been consecrated to the office of the priesthood. Instead of 
tins, the tribe of Levi was set apart that it might supply all the 
priests required for the services of the sanctuary; and the first-born 
for whom they were thus substituted were redeemed or released from 
that service by the payment each, on the day of their presentation in 
the temple, of a merely nominal gratuity; by that payment, the 
original right and title, as it were, of the first-born to the office of the 
priesthood being still preserved. 

This rite, then, of the presentation of the first-born in the temple 
had a double character and office. It was a standing memorial or 
remembrancer of a past fact in the history of the Jewish people — the 
deliverance of their forefathers from the bondage of Egypt, and espe- 
cially of the shielding of their first-born from the stroke which fell on 
ah the first-born of the Egyptians; but the deliverance from Egyp- 
tian bondage was itself a type and prophecy of another higher and 
wider deliverance, and especially of the manner in which that deliv- 
erance was to be wrought out. 

In the light of this explanation, let us look yet once again at our 
Lord's presentation in the temple as a first-born child, and see 
whether — as the eye of faith looks through the outward actions to 
that which the actions symbolize, looks through the outward form 
and discerns the spiritual significance — the whole scene does not 
become, as it were, transfigured before us. You mount the steps, and 
come up into this temple at Jerusalem. It is neither a feast-day nor 
a Sabbath-day, nor is it the fixed hour for prayer. A few priests, or 
Levites, or other hangers-on of the holy place, are loitering in the 
outer courts. A man and woman in Galilean dress, the woman bear 
ing an infant in her arms, cross the court and go forward to where 
the priest is standing, whose duty it is to present whatever individual 
sacrifices or oblations may that day be offered. They tell the priest 
their errand, hand to him or to one of his attendants the two young 



THE PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE. 35 

turtle-doves and the five shekels of the sanctuary. He in his turn 
goes through with his part of the prescribed ceremonial, and gives 
the child back again to his parents as a first-born child that had been 
duly devoted to the Lord. The father, the mother, the priest, what- 
ever onlookers there are, all imagine that nothing more has been 
done in all this than is so often done when first-born children are 
consecrated. But was it so ? Who is this child that lies so passive 
on its mother's breast, and all unconscious of what is being done with 
him, is handled by the officiating priest? He is, as his birth had 
proclaimed him to be, one of the seed of Abraham, and yet he after- 
wards said of himself, "Before Abraham was, I am." He is, as the 
angel had proclaimed him to be, David's son and David's heir ; but 
as he said afterwards of himself, the root as well as the branch of 
David : David's Lord as well as David's son. He is the first-born of 
Mary, but he is also the first-born of every creature, the beginning 
of the creation of God. He is the infant of a few weeks old, but also 
the Ancient of Days, whose goings forth were from of old, from ever- 
lasting. Here then at last is the Lord, the Jehovah, whom so many 
of the Jews were seeking, brought suddenly, almost, as one might 
say, unconsciously into his own temple. Here is the Lamb of God, 
of old provided, now publicly designated and set apart — of which the 
paschal one, the sight of whose blood warded off the stroke of the 
destroying angel, was but the imperfect type. Here is the one and 
only true High Priest over the house of God, consecrated to his 
office, of whose all prevailing, everlasting, and unchangeable priest- 
hood, the Aaronic priesthood, the priesthood of the first-born, was 
but the dim shadow. Here is the Son presented to the Father, within 
the holy place on earth, as he enters upon that fife of service, suffer- 
ing, sacrifice, the glorious issue of which was to be his entering not 
by the blood of bulls and goats, but by his own blood, into that holy 
place not made with hands, having obtained eternal redemption for 
us, there for ever to present himself before the Father, as the living 
head of the great community of the redeemed, the general assembly 
and church of the first-born which are written in heaven. 

How little did that Jewish priest, who took the infant Saviour and 
held him up before the altar, imagine that a greater than Moses, one 
greater than the temple, was in his arms ! How little did he ima- 
gine, as he inscribed the new name of Jesus in the roll of the first- 
born of Israel, that he was signing the death-warrant of the Mosaic 
economy now waxing old and ready to vanish away; that he was 
ushering in that better, brighter day, when neither of the temple 
upon Mount Zion, nor of that upon Gerizim, it should be said tha* 



36 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

there only was the true worship of Jehovah celebrated ; but when, 
taught by this very Jesus to know God as our Father in heaven, 
unfettered and redeemed humanity in every land should worship him 
who is a Spirit in spirit and in truth. Yet even so it was; Christ's 
first entrance into the temple, his dedication there unto the Lord, 
was no such common ceremonial as we might fancy it to be. Simple 
in form, there lay in it a depth and sublimity of meaning. It was 
nothing else than the first formal earthly presentation to the Fathei 
of the incarnate Son of God, his first formal earthly dedication to 
that great work given him to do. And was it not meet when the 
Father and the Son were brought visibly together in this relation- 
ship, that the presence of the Holy Spirit should be manifested; that 
by that Spirit Simeon and Anna should be called in, and by that 
Spirit their lips should be made to speak the infant Saviour's praise ; 
that so within the temple, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit might all 
appear, dignifying with their presence our Lord's first entrance into 
the holy place ; his consecration to his earthly mediatorial work ? 

Two fitter channels through which the Spirit's testimony might 
thus be given could scarcely have been chosen. Simeon and Anna 
both belonged to that limited number, who in the midst of all the 
crude and carnal conceptions of the Messiah prevalent among their 
countrymen, were waiting for Christ and longing for his coming, not 
so much for the temporal as for the spiritual benefits which his com- 
ing and kingdom were to convey. Both were well stricken in years, 
fit representatives of the closing age of Judaism; both were full of 
faith and hope, fit representatives of that new age whose earliest 
dawn they were among the first to notice and to welcome. 

So ardent as his years ran on had Simeon's faith and hope 
become, that this one thing had he desired of the Lord, that before 
his eyes closed in death they might rest upon his Saviour. And he 
was heard as to that for which he had so longed. It was revealed to 
him that the desire of his heart should be granted, but how and when 
he knew not. That forenoon, however, a strong desire to go up into 
the temple seizes him. He was not accustomed to go there at that 
hour, but he obeyed that inward impulse, which perhaps he recog- 
nized as the work of the Divine Spirit, by whom the gracious revela- 
tion had been made to him. He enters the temple courts; he noti- 
ces a little family group approach; he sees an infant dedicated to the 
Lord. That infant, an inward voice proclaims to him is the Messiah 
he has been waiting for, the Consolation of Israel come at last in the 
flesh. Then comes into his heart a joy beyond all bounds It kin- 
dles in his radiant looks ; it beats in his swelling veins ; the strength 



THE PBESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE. 37 

of youth is back again into his feeble limbs. He hastens up to Mary, 
takes from the wondering yet consenting mother's hands the conse- 
crated babe, and clasping it to his beating bosom, with eyes uplifted 
to heaven, he says, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in 
peace, according to thy word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, 
which thou hast prepared before the face of all people ; a light to 
lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel." Joseph 
and Mary stand lost in wonder. How has this stranger come to see 
aught uncommon in this child ; how come to see in him the salvation 
of Israel ? Have some stray tidings of his birth come into the holy 
city from the hill country of Judea, or has the wondrous tale the 
shepherds of Bethlehem "made known abroad," been repeated in 
this old man's hearing? What he says is in curious harmony with 
all the angel had announced to Mary and to the shepherds about the 
child, and yet there is a difference; for now, for the first time, is it 
distinctly declared that this child shall be a light to lighten the Gen- 
tiles ; nay, his being such a light is placed even before his being the 
glory of Israel. Has Simeon had a separate revelation made to him 
from heaven, and is this an independent and fuller testimony borne 
tc the Messiahship of Jesus ? 

Simeon sees the wonder that shines out in their astonished looks; 
and, the spirit of prophecy imparted — that spirit which had been 
mute in Israel since the days of Malachi, but which now once more 
lifts up its voice within the temple — he goes on, after a gentle bless- 
ing bestowed upon both parents, to address himself particularly to 
Mary, furnishing in his words to her fresh material for wonder, while 
opening a new future to her eye. "Behold," he said to her, " this 
child of thine is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel." 
He may have meant, in saying so, that the purpose and effect of the 
Lord's showing unto Israel would be the casting down of many in 
order to the raising of them up again ; the casting of them down from 
their earlier, worldlier thoughts and expectations, in order to the 
lifting them to higher, worthier, more spiritual conceptions of his 
character and office. Or, perhaps it was to different and not to tho 
same persons that he referred, the truth revealed being this : that 
while some were to rise, others were to fall; that the stone which to 
some was to be a foundation-stone elect and precious, was to others 
to be a stone of stumbling and rock of offence; that Jesus was to 
come for judgment into the world, that those who saw not might see, 
that those who saw might be made blind; his name to be ihe savor 
of life unto life to the one, the savor of death unto death to the 
other. 



M THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

From all Mary Lad yet heard, she might have imagined thai hei 
child would be welcomed by all Israel — so soon as the day for his 
revelation came — as its long-looked for deliverer; and that a career 
of unsnffering triumph would lie before him — a career in whose hon- 
ors and bliss she could scarcely help at times imagining that the 
should have a share. But now, for the first time, the indication i*$ 
clearly given that all Israel was not to hail her child and welcome 
him as its Messiah ; that hostility was to spring up even within the 
ranks of the chosen people ; that he was to be a " sign which should 
be spoken against;" or rather — for such is the more literal rendering 
of the words — a butt or mark at which many shafts or javelins should 
be launched. Nor was Mary herself to escape. Among the many 
swords or darts levelled at his breast, one was to reach hers: "Tea, 
a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also." Strange that in 
the very centre of so broad and comprehensive a prophecy concern- 
ing Christ, such a minute and personal allusion to Mary should come 
in ; a high honor put upon the mother of our Lord that her individual 
sorrows should be foretold in this way in connection with the deeper 
sorrows of her Son ; and a singular token of the tender sympathy of 
Him by whom it was prompted, that now when her heart was filling 
with strange, bright hopes, now while her child was yet an infant, 
now ere the evil days drew on, when she should have to see him 
become the object of reproach and persecution, and stand herself to 
look at him upon that cross of shame and agony on which they hung 
him up to die — that now to temper her first-born joy, to prepare and 
fortify her for the bitter trials in store for her, this prophecy should 
have been thus early spoken. 

" That the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed." No such 
revealer of the thoughts of men's hearts has the world ever seen as 
Jesus Christ. His presence, his character, his ministry brought out 
to light the hidden things of many a human spirit. He walked abroad 
applying upon all sides the infallible test which tried the temper of 
the soul : " If I had not come," he said, " they had not had sin, but 
now they have no cloak for their sin." In its uncloaked nakedness 
he made the sin be seen. "I know you," said he to the Jews, 
"that ye have not the love of God in you;" and the reason that he 
gave for this was, that they had rejected him. Coming into contact 
with them all in turn, he revealed the hypocrisy- of the Pharisees, the 
worldhness of the young ruler, the faith of the Syro-Phcenician woman, 
the malice of the Sanhedrim, the weakness of Pilate, the treachery 
of Judas, the rashness of Peter, the tender care and sympathy of 
Marv. Throughout the whole of his- earthly life, the description given 



THE NATIVITY. 39 

here by Simeon was continually being verified. That description 
itself throughout reveals its divine origin and character. It proves 
itself to have been no bold conjecture of human wisdom, but a reve- 
lation of the future made by God. 

Simeon's prophetic portraiture of the intention and effect of the 
advent of the Eedeemer had scarcely been completed when another 
testimony was added, that of the aged Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, 
who, like her venerable compeer, appears but this once in the sacred 
page, and then is hidden for ever from our eyes. It is not said that 
any special impulse drew her to the temple. It was her daily haunt. 
Instantly serving God day and night, her life was one of fastings and 
prayers. When it was also made known to her that the infant whom 
she met in the temple was no other than the Christ of God, her song 
of praise was added to that of Simeon, but the words of it are lost. 
It would, we may be assured, be a suitable accompaniment, a fit 
response to his. He, as may be believed, retired from the temple 
to close his eyes in peace ; but she was moved to go about and speak 
of the Lord whom she had found to all that looked for redemption in 
Jerusalem — the first preacher of the gospel, the first female evangelist 
in the holy city. 

In the briefest terms, let one or two practical reflections be now 
suggested. 

Simeon did not wish to die till he had seen the Lord his Saviour; 
as soon as he saw Him he was ready and willing to depart. Till our 
spiritual eyes be opened to see Him who is the way, the truth, and 
the life, which of us is ready to meet our Maker — is prepared to 
behold his face in peace ? But when once our eyes have seen and 
our hearts embraced him, which of us should fear to die ? Simeon 
desired to depart. It was not that, like Job, he wished to die because 
life had become burdensome. His wish to depart was not the prod- 
uct of hours of bitter sorrow, but of a moment of exceeding joy. It 
was not that, like Paul, he desired to depart in order to be with 
Christ. It was the fulness of that gratitude which he felt for the 
great gift of God in allowing him to see Christ in the flesh ; it was 
the depth of that satisfaction and delight which filled his heart as 
his arms enfolded Jesus, which, leaving nothing more, nothing higher 
that he could hope for in this world, drew forth, as by a natural 
impulse, the expression, " Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart 
in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." Though nothing 
is said about his age in the evangelical narrative, we may believe that 
the length of years which he had already reached, making the thought 
of approaching departure from this world familiar, conspired, if not 



40- THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

to beget, yet to give emphasis to this expression of his desire. But 
't may be well, even though we be not in his exact position, to put to 
mrselves the question whether any desire or any willingness we have 
ever had to die was the fruit of hours of earthly disappointments, or 
af moments of spiritual elation and joy. 

Christ was set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; he 
is set for the fall and rising again of many still. His gospel never 
leaves us as it finds us. It softens or it hardens, it kills or it makes 
alive. That stone which the Jewish builders rejected is rejected by 
many builders still, and yet it is the headstone of the corner. Blessed 
is he who grounds thereon his humble yet undoubting trust. " But 
many among them," saith the prophet, " shall stumble and fall, and 
be broken' 1 upon this stone. May our feet be shielded from such 
a fate! 

The sufferings of Mary were linked with the sufferings of her Son. 
It was his being wounded that wounded her. It was the stroke which 
descended on him that sent the sword into her heart. The same kind 
of tie should bind every believer to Christ. He is so sensitive as to 
all that affects his people's welfare and happiness, that whatever 
hurts the least of these his little ones touches the apple of his eye. 
And they in turn should be so sensitive as to all that affects his honor, 
his cause, his kingdom on earth, that whatever damages or injures 
them should send a thrill of answering sorrow through then heart. 

Finally, Christ is the great Bevealer of the thoughts and intents 
of the heart. Are we proud, are we covetous, are we worldly, are we 
self-willed? Nothing will more bring out the sway and empire of 
these or any kindred passions over us than the bringing closer home 
to us the holy character and unmitigable claims of Jesus Christ. 
Keep them at a distance, and the strong man armed keeps the pal- 
ace of the soul, and all comparatively is at peace. Bring them near, 
force them home upon the conscience and the heart ; then it is that 
the inward struggle begins; and in that struggle the spirit un< on- 
sciously revealeth its true condition before God. 



THE VISIT OF THE MAGI. 41 

IV. 

The Visit of the Magi.* 

Three striking incidents marked the birth and infancy of oui 
Lord. First, the midnight appearance of the angelic host to the 
shepherds on the plains of Bethlehem, and their visit to the village 
in which the great birth had that night occurred ; second, the presen- 
tation of Jesus as a first-born child in the temple, and the testimony 
there given to him in the prophetic utterances of Simeon and Anna ; 
and third, the visit of the wise men from the East, and the worship 
and offerings which they presented to the new-born child. Each of 
these had its special wonders ; in each a supernatural attestation to 
the greatness of the event was given ; and woven together, they form 
the wreath of heavenly glory hung by the Divine hand around the 
infancy of the Son of Mary. 

It is impossible to determine the date of the visit of the wise men. 
It must have occurred not long after the birth, while Joseph and Mary 
still lingered in Bethlehem, and it is of little moment whether we 
place it before or after the presentation in the Temple at Jerusalem. 
The epithet by which Matthew describes to us these Eastern stran- 
gers is not so vague and indefinite as it seems in our translation. H* 
calls them Magi from the East. The birthplace and natural home of 
the magian worship was in Persia. And there the Magi had a place 
and power such as the Chaldaeans had in Babylon, the Hierophants 
in Egypt, the Druids in Gaul, and the Brahmins still have in India. 
They formed a tribe or caste, priestly in office, princely in rank. They 
were the depositaries of nearly all the knowledge or science existing 
in the country where they lived; they were the first professors and 
practisers of astrology, worshippers of the sun and the other heav- 
enly bodies, from whose appearance and movements they drew their 
divination as to earthly events — all illustrious births below being 
indicated, as they deemed, by certain peculiar conjunctions of the 
stars above. Both as priests and diviners they had great power. 
They formed, in fact, the most influential section of the community. 
In political affairs their influence was predominant. The education 
of royalty was in their hands ; they filled all the chief offices of state ; 
they constituted the supreme counsel of the realm. As originally 
applied to this Median priest-caste, the term Magi was one of dig- 
nity and honor. Afterwards, when transferred to other countries. 

* Matthew 2 : 1-12. 



42 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

and employed to designate not that peculiar sacerdotal order, but all 
persons of whatever description who were professors of astrology and 
practisers of divination, as these astrologers and diviners sunk in 
character, and had recourse to all kinds of mean imposture, the name 
i>f magian or magician was turned into one of dishonor and reproach. 
There seems no reason, however, to doubt that it was in its earlier 
and honorable meaning that it is used in the gospel narrative. 

llemarkable passages, both from Roman and Jewish writers,* 
have been quoted which inform us that at the period of our Saviour's 
birth, there prevailed generally over the East, in regions remote from 
Palestine, a vague but strong belief that one born in Judea was to 
arise and rule the world. Popularly this expectation was confined to 
the appearance of some warrior chief who, by the might of his victo- 
rious arms, was to subdue the nations under him. But there were 
many then in every land,whose faith in their old hereditary religions 
had been undermined ; who from those Jews now scattered every- 
where abroad, had learned some of the chief elements of the pure 
Israelitish faith; and half embracing it, had risen to a desire and 
hope which took a higher ground, and who in this expected king that 
was to spring out of Juclah, were ready to hail a spiritual guide and 
deliverer. Such, we believe, were the Magi of Matthew's narrative. 
Balaam, a man of their own or a kindred tribe, in their own or in a 
neighboring country, had centuries before foretold that a star should 
come out of Jacob, and a sceptre rise out of Israel. Numb. 24: 17. 
This and other of those old Jewish prophecies which pointed to the 
same event may have in some form or other reached their ears, pre- 
paring them for the birth of one who in the first instance was to be 
the king of the Jews, but whose kingdom was to connect itself with 
other than mere earthly interests, to have intimate relationships with 
man's highest hopes and his eternal destiny. Sharing the general 
hope, but with that hope purified and exalted, let us believe that 
these Magi were earnestly, devoutly, waiting the coming of this new 
king of the Jews and of mankind. Their office and occupation led 
them to the nightly study of the starry heavens ; but still as they 
gazed and speculated and divined, they felt that it was not from that 
glittering broadspread page of wonders hung above their heads that 
any clear or satisfying information as to the divine character and 
purposes was to be derived. Much as they fancied they could glean 
from them as to man's earthly fortunes, what could the bright mute 
stars tell them of the eternal destinies of those unnumbered human 
spirits which beneath their light were, generation after generation, 
* Suetonius, Tacitus, Josephus. 



THE VISIT OF THE MAGI. 43 

passing away into the world beyond the grave ? How often may the 
deep sigh of disappointment have risen from the depths of these 
men's hearts, as to all their earnest interrogatories not a word of dis- 
tinct response was given, and the heavens they gazed on kept the 
untold secret locked in their capacious bosom. But the sigh of the 
earnest seeker after truth, like the sigh of the lowly, penitent, and 
contrite heart, never rises to the throne of heaven in vain. Many 
errors may have mingled with those men's religious opinions, much 
superstition have been in their religious worship, but God met in 
mercy the truth-seeking spirit in the midst of its errors, and made its 
very superstition pave the way to faith. 

One night, as those Magi stood watching their cloudless skies, 
their practised eye detected a new-come stranger among the stars. 
The appearance of new stars is no novelty to the astronomer. We 
have authentic records of stars of the first magnitude, rivalling in their 
brilliance the brightest of our old familiar planets, shining out sud- 
denly in places where no stars had been seen before, and after a sea- 
son vanishing away. Singular conjunctions of the planets have also 
been occasionally observed, some of which are known to have occur- 
red about the time of the Redeemer's birth. It may possibly have 
been some such strange appearance in the heavens that attracted the 
eyes of the wise men. It is said, however, in the narrative, that the 
star went before them till it came and stood over where the young 
child was. Understanding this as implying an actual and visible 
movement of the star — that it went, lantern-like, before them on their 
way, and indicated in some way, as by a finger of pointing light, the 
very spot where they were to find the child — as no such function 
could be discharged by any of the ordinary inhabitants of the 
heavens, all about its appearance must be taken as supernatural, and 
we must regard it as some star-like meteor shining in our lower at- 
mosphere. But be it what it might, however kindled, whatever curi- 
osity its strange appearance might excite — though the Magi, pene- 
trated by the popular belief, might naturally enough have regarded 
it as an omen of the great expected birth — the star could of itself tell 
nothing. However miraculous its appearance, if left without an inter- 
preter, it was but a dumb witness after all. The conviction is almost 
forced upon us that, in addition to the external sign, there was some 
divine communication made to these Magi, informing them of tlu 
errand which the star was commissioned to discharge. But why the 
double indication of the birth — the star without, the revelation made 
within ? Why, but as an evidence and illustration of the care and 
gracious condescension of Him who not only to the spiritual commu- 



44 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

nication added tlie external sign, to be a help to the weak, infant, 
staggering faith, but who, in the very shaping of that outward sign, 
was pleased to accommodate himself to these men's earthly calling; 
and while to Mary and to the shepherds — Jews living in a land where 
stories of angelic manifestations were current — angels were sent to 
make announcement of the Eedeemer's birth, to those astrologers of 
the East he sends a star, meeting them in their own familiar walks, 
showing itself among the divinities of their erring worship, gently to 
lead them into His presence to whom the world's true worship was to 
be given. 

But when this star appeared, and after they understood what its 
presence betokened, was it a spontaneous impulse on their part to go 
and do homage to the new-born King, or did He who revealed the 
birth enjoin the journey ? Whatever the prompting, human or divine, 
on which they acted, it does not appear that in the first instance any 
thing beyOnd the general information was communicated, that some- 
where in Judea the birth had taken place. The star, it would appear, 
did not go before them all the way, for in that case they would not 
have needed to institute any further inquiry. Its first office dis- 
charged, the star disappeared, leaving them to have recourse to such 
common sources of information as lay open to them. It was at Jeru- 
salem, in the capital of the country over which this new-born King 
was to reign ; it was there, if anywhere, the needed intelligence was 
to be obtained. To Jerusalem, therefore, they repair. Entering the 
holy city, they put eagerly and expectantly the question, "Where is 
he that is born King of the Jews ? for we have seen his star in the 
east, and are come to worship him." 

The question takes the startled city by surprise. No one here has 
seen the star, no one here has heard about this king. The tidings of 
the arrival of those distinguished strangers, and of the question which 
they asked, are carried quickly to the palace, and circulate rapidly 
through the city. Herod is troubled. The usurper trembles on his 
throne. Has a new claimant, with better title to that throne, indeed 
been born? How comes it, if it be so, that he has never heard of 
such a birth? Has treachery been already busy at its work; have 
they been concealing from him this event ? Have the enemies of 
himself and of his family been cloaking thus their projects, waiting 
only for the fit time to strike the blow, and hurl him from his seat? 
The blood he had already shed to reach that height begins to cry for 
vengeance, and spectres of the slaughtered dead shake their terrors 
in his face. Herod's trouble at the tidings we well can understand, 
but why was it thai all Jerusalem was troubled along with him: 



THE YISIT OF THE MAGI. 45 

Was it the simple fear of change, the terror of another re^v olution ; 
the knowledge of Herod's jealous temper and bloodthirsty disposi- 
tion ; the alarm lest his vindictive spirit might prompt him to some 
new deed of cruelty, in order to cut off this rival ? If so, how low 
beneath the yoke of tyranny must the spirit of those citizens of Jeru- 
salem have sunk ; how completely, for the time, must the selfish havt 
absorbed the patriotic sentiment in their breasts ! 

But whatever alarm he felt, whatever dark purposes were brood- 
ing in his heart, Herod at first concealed them. He must know more 
about this affair, get some information before he acts. He calls 
together the chief priests and the scribes, and at no loss, apparently, 
to identify the King of the Jews that the Magi asked about with the 
Christ the Messiah of ancient prophecy, he demands of them where 
Christ should be born. As little at a loss, they lay their hand at 
once upon the prophecy of Micah, which pointed to Bethlehem as the 
birthplace. Furnished with this information, the King invites the 
Magi to a private interview, conveys to them the information he had 
himself received, and concealing his sinister designs, sends them off 
to Bethlehem to search diligently for the child, and when they had 
found him, to bring him word again, that he too, as he falsely said, 
might go and worship him. 

Let us pause a moment here to reflect upon the impression which 
this visit to Jerusalem, and the state of things discovered there, was 
fitted to make upon these eastern visitors. It must surely have sur- 
prised them to come among the very people over whom this new-born 
King was to rule, to enter the capital of their country, the city of the 
chief priests and scribes by whom, if by any, an event so signal 
should have been known, and to find there no notice, no knowledge 
of the birth ; to find instead that they, coming from a strange land, 
professors of another faith, are the first to tell these Jews of the 
advent of their own king. It must have done more than surprise 
them ; they too, in their turn, must have been troubled and perplexed 
to see how the announcement, when it was made, was received ; to 
see such jealousy, such alarm; and, at the last, so great incredulity 
or indifference, that near as Bethlehem was, and interesting as was 
the object of their visit to it, there were none among those inhabit- 
ants of Jerusalem who oared to accompany them. Was there noth- 
ing here to awaken doubt — for such faith as theirs to stagger at? 
Might they not have been deceived ? Perhaps it was a delusion they 
had listened to — a deceitful appearance they had seen in their own 
land. Had these Magi been men of a weak faith or an infirm pur- 
pose, they might, instead of going on to Betlilehem, have gone forth 



46 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

despondii gly and distrustfully from Jerusalem, and taken their way 
back to their own homes. But strange and perplexing as all this is, 
it neither shakes their faith nor affects their conduct. They had 
good reason to believe that the communication at first made to them 
came to them from God, and once satisfied of this, no conduct on 
the part of others, however unaccountable or inconsistent, moves 
them away from the beginning of their confidence. Though all the 
dwellers in Jerusalem be troubled at tidings which should have been 
to them tidings of great joy ; though not a Jew be ready to join 
them, or to bid them Godspeed ere they leave the city's gate, to 
Bethlehem they go. 

But a new perplexity arises. Somewhere in that village the birth 
has taken place, but who shall tell them where? If the inhabitants 
of the capital knew and cared so little about the matter, what help 
will they get from the villagers at Bethlehem ? They may require to 
search diligently, as Herod bade them, and yet, after all, the search 
may be vain. Just then, in the midst of their perplexity, the star 
which they had seen in the east once more shone out above their 
heads, to go before them till it stood over where the young child lay. 
No wonder that, when they saw that star,, they rejoiced with an 
exceeding great joy. It dispelled all doubt, it relieved from all per 
plexity. When first they saw it, in the East, it wore the face of a 
stranger among old friends; now it wears the face of an old friend 
among strangers, and they hail it as we hail a friend we thought was 
lost, but who comes to us at the very time we need liim most. 

Let us note the contrast, as to the mode and measure of divine 
guidance given, between the Magi from the East and the shepherds 
of Bethlehem and the chief priests and scribes of Jerusalem. The 
shepherds were as sincere, perhaps more devout than the wise men; 
understanding better who and what the Messiah was to be, and long- 
ing more ardently for his coming; but they were uneducated men — 
men at least whose position and occupation prevented them from 
instituting independent inquiries of their own. They were left to find 
out nothing; to them a full revelation was at once given. Such 
minute information was furnished as to the time and place and cir- 
cumstances of the birth, that they were enabled, with little or no 
inquiry, to proceed directly to the place where the young child lay. 
The Magi, on the other hand, were men of intelligence, education, 
wealth. They had the leisure, and they possessed all the means for 
prosecuting an independent research. To them no such full and 
minute directory of conduct was supplied. What they could not 
learn otherwise than by a divine revelation, was in that way commu- 



THE VISIT OF THE MAGI. 47 

nicated; but what they could learn by the use of ordinary means, 
they were left in that way to find out. They repair to, and they 
exhaust all the common sources of knowledge which lie open to them. 
They go to Jerusalem as to the likeliest place ; they get there the 
information as to the place of the Lord's birth; they act upon the 
information thus obtained up to the farthest limit to which it can 
carry them. They tarry not in the unbelieving city, as many might 
have done, till further light was given them. They turn not the 
incredulity of others into a ground of doubt, nor the incompleteness 
of the intelligence afforded into a ground of discouragement and 
delay. They know now that somewhere in Bethlehem the object of 
their search is to be found, and if they fail in finding him, it will be 
in Bethlehem that the failure shall take place. Nor is it till they are 
on their way to that village, that the star of heavenly guidance once 
more appears ; but then it does appear, and sends gladness into their 
hearts. 

And have we not all, as followers of the Crucified, another and 
higher journey to perform ; a journey not to the place of the Saviour's 
earthly birth, but that of his heavenly dwelling? And if, on that 
journey, we act as those men did, God will deal with us as he dealt 
with them. The path before us may be often hidden in obscurity ; 
our lights may go out by the way; we may know as little of what the 
next stage is to reveal, as those men knew at Jerusalem what awaited 
them in their path to Bethlehem ; but if, like them, we hold on our 
course, unmoved by the example of others; if we follow the light 
given us to the farthest point to which that light can carry us, then 
on us too, when lights all fail, and we seem about to be left in utter 
darkness, some star of heavenly guidance will arise, at sight of which 
we shall rejoice with an exceeding joy. Unto those that are thus 
upright, there shall arise light in the darkness ; and to him that order- 
eth thus his conversation aright, God shall show his salvation. 

But look now at the chief priests and scribes of the holy city, into 
whose hands the ancfent oracles of God had been specially commit- 
ted. They could tell at once, from the prophecies of Micah, the place 
of the Messiah's birth ; and they could almost as readily and as accu- 
rately from the prophecies of Daniel have known the time of his 
advent. To them, as furnished already with sufficient means of infor- 
mation, no supernatural communication of any kind is made ; to them 
no angel comes, no star appears, no sign is given. Had they but used 
aright the means already in their hands, they should have been wait- 
ing for the coming of the Lord, with ears all open to catch the first 
feint rumors which must have reached Jerusalem from a village not 



48 . THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

more than six miles off, of what the shepherds saw and heard ; they 
should have been out to Bethlehem before these Magi came, ready 
to welcome those visitors from a far country, and to conduct them 
into the presence of their new-born King. But they neglected, 
they abused the privileges they possessed ; and now, as the proper 
fruit of their own doings, not only is the same kind of information 
supplied to others denied to them, but the very way in which they 
are first informed works disastrously, and excites hostile prejudices 
in their breast. " Where is he," these strangers say to them, " who 
is born King of the Jews?" Has an event like this occurred — 
occurred within a few miles of the metropolis — and they, the heads 
and rulers of the Jewish people, not know of it ! For their first 
knowledge of it must they be indebted to these foreigners, men igno- 
rant of Judea, unread in their sacred books ! A star, forsooth, these 
men said, had appeared to them in the East; was it to be believed 
that for them, in their land of heathen darkness and superstition, such 
a fresh fight should be kindled in the heavens, while to God's own 
appointed priesthood no discovery of any kind had been made ? We 
discern thus in its very earliest stage, that antipathy to the son of 
Mary which, beginning in incredulity and fostered by pride, grew 
into malignant hatred, and issued in the nailing of Jesus to the cross. 
And even in the first stage of the course they followed, they appear 
before us reaping the fruit of their former doings, and sowing the 
seeds of their after crimes ; for it is thus that the husbandry of wick- 
edness goes on — the seed-time and the harvest, the sowing and the 
reaping going on together. What a singular spectacle does the proud 
and jealous priesthood of Judea thus present, learned in the letter of 
their own Scriptures, but wholly ignorant of their spirit; pointing the 
way to others, not taking a single step in it themselves ; types of the 
nation they belonged to, of the function which the Jews have so 
largely since discharged — the openers of the door to Gentile inqui- 
rers, the closers of that door upon themselves. 

We rejoin now the Magi at Bethlehem. They enter the indicated 
house, and stand before a mother and her child: a mother of very 
humble appearance; a child clad in simplest attire. Can this, they 
think, as they look around, be the roof beneath which infant royalty 
lies cradled ! Can that be the child they have come so far to see and 
worship ! Had they known all about that infant which we now know ; 
had they known that an angelic choir had already sung his birth, 
lading the midnight breezes with a richer freight of melody than they 
had ever wafted through the skies ; had they known that in that fit- 
tie hand which lav folded there in feebleness, in the gentle breath 



THE VISIT OF THE MAGI. 49 

which was heaving that infant bosom, the power of omnipotence lay 
slumbering — that at the touch of the one, the blind eye was to open 
and the tied tongue to be unloosed — that at the bidding of the other, 
I he wildest elements of nature in their stormiest march were to stand 
still, devils were to be driven out from their usurped aj r T es, and the 
dead to come forth from the sepulchre ; had they known that at the 
death of this Son of Mary the sun was to be darkened, the rocks 
were to be rent, and the graves to give up their old inhabitants — thai 
he himself was to burst the barriers of the tomb, and rise in triumph 
attended by an angel escort, to take his place at the right hand of the 
Majesty in the heavens — we should not have wondered at the ready 
homage which they rendered to him. But they knew nothing of alJ 
this. What they did know we cannot tell. We only know that 
instantly, in absence of all outward warrant for the act, in spite of 
the most unpromising appearances, they bow the knee before that 
undistinguished infant, lower than it bent before the haughty Herod 
at Jerusalem ; bow in adoration such as they never rendered to any 
earthly sovereign. And that act of worship over, they open their 
treasures and present to him their gifts : the gold, the frankincense, 
and the myrrh, the rarest products of the East; an offering such as 
any monarch might have had presented to him by the ambassadors 
from any foreign prince. When we take the whole course of these 
men's conduct into account ; when we remember that they had none 
of the advantages of a Jewish birth or education, of an early acquaint- 
ance with the Jewish Scriptures ; when we think of their starting on 
their long and perilous journey with no other object than the making 
of this single obeisance to the infant Eedeemer of mankind; when 
we look at them standing unmoved amid all the discouragements of 
the Jewish metropolis; when we attend them on their solitary way 
to Bethlehem ; when we stand by their side, as beneath that lowly 
roof they silently worship, and spread out their costly gifts — we can- 
not but regard their faith as in many of its features unparalleled in 
the gospel narrative ; we cannot but place them in the front rank oi 
that goodly company in whose acts the power and the triumph of a 
simple faith shine forth. 

That single act of homage rendered, they return to their own 
country, and we hear of them no more. They come like spirits, cast- 
ing no shadow before them; and like spirits they depart, passing 
away into that obscurity from which they had emerged. But our 
affection follows them to their native land — would fain penetrate the 
secret of their after lives and deaths. Did these men see and hoar 
and know no more of Jesus? Were they living when — after thirty 

Life of Christ. 4 



50 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

years of profoundest silence, not a rumor of his name going any- 
where abroad — tidings came at last of the words he spake, the deeds 
he did, the death he died ? We would fain believe, so far, the quaint 
old legend of the middle ages, that connects itself with the fancied 
resting-place of their relics in the Cathedral of Cologne ; we would 
tain believe that they lived to converse with one of the apostlas of 
the Lord, and to receive Christian baptism at his hands. However 
it may have been, we can scarce believe that He whose star carried 
them from their eastern homes to Bethlehem, and whose Spirit 
prompted the worship they then rendered, left them to die in hea- 
then ignorance and unbelief. Let us cherish rather the belief that 
they who bowed so reverently before the earthly cradle, are now wor- 
shipping with, a profounder reverence before the heaveDly throne. 

But what special significance has this incident in the early life of 
oar Redeemer? Why were these men summoned from their distant 
homes to come so far to pay that single act of homage to the infant 
Jesus, and then retire for ever from our sight ? Why, but that even 
with the first weak beginnings of the Saviour's earthly life, there 
might be a foretokening of the wide embrace of that kingdom he 
came to establish ; a first fulfilling of those ancient prophecies which 
had foretold that the Gentiles should come to this light, and kings to 
the brightness of its rising; that all they from Sheba should come, 
bringing gold and incense. These eastern Magi were the earliest 
ambassadors from heathen lands, the first shadowy precursors of 
that great company to be gathered in from the east, and from the 
west, and from the north, and from the south, to sit down with Abra- 
ham in the kingdom of the just. In these persons and in their act 
the Gentile world, of which they formed a part, gave an early wel- 
come to the Eedeemer, and hastened to lay its tribute at his feet. 
They were, in fact — and this should bind them the closer to our 
hearts — they were our representatives at Bethlehem, making for us 
Gentiles the first expression of our faith, the first offer of our alle- 
giance. Let us rightly follow up what they did in our name. First, 
they worshipped, and then they gave the best and richest things they 
had. The gold, the frankincense, the myrrh had been of little worth 
had the worship of the heart not gone before and sanctified the gift. 
But the gift most appropriately followed the worship. First, then, 
let us give ourselves to the Lord, our heart the first oblation that we 
proffer ; for the heart once given, the hand will neither be empty noi 
idle, nor will it grudge the richest thing that it can hold, nor the bes* 
service it can render. 



THE MASSACBE OF THE INNOCENTS. 51 



V. 

The Massacre of the Innocents, and the Flight 

into Egypt* 

There are three Herods who appear prominently in the pages of 
the New Testament. First, Herod the Great, the son of a crafty and 
wealthy Idumean or Edomite, who, during the reign of the last of 
the Asmonean princes, attained to great political influence in Judea, 
securing for his eldest son Phasael the governorship of Jerusalem; 
and for Herod, his younger son, the chief command in Galilee. Pha- 
sael was cut off in one of those political commotions which the 
raising of a foreign family to such an elevated position engendered; 
but Herod escaped all the perils to which he was thus exposed, dis- 
tinguished himself by his address and bravery, showed great politi- 
cal foresight in allying himself closely with the power which he saw 
was to prevail in Judea as over all other lands, sought and won the 
personal friendship of Cassius and of Mark Antony, and, mainly by 
the influence of the latter, was proclaimed king of the Jews. 

Second, Herod Antipas, a son of this first Herod, who, in that 
division of his father's kingdom which took place at his decease, 
became tetrarch of Galilee and Perea. This was the Herod who so 
often appears in the narrative of our Lord's ministry, who at first 
heard John the Baptist gladly, but who afterwards gave the order 
for his execution ; who happened to be in Jerusalem at the time of 
Christ's trial and condemnation, and who was brought then into suet 
singular contact with Jesus. 

Third, Herod Agrippa, a grandson of the first Herod, though not 
a son of Herod Antipas, who was invested by the Komans with the 
royal dignity, and ruled over all the country which had been subject 
to his grandfather. This was the Herod who appears in the history 
of the Acts of the Apostles ; who stretched forth his hands to vex 
certain of the church; who killed James, the brother of John, with 
the sword ; who, because he saw that it pleased the Jews, proceeded 
to take Peter also; and whose awful death so soon afterwards at 
Ca sarea St. Luke has so impressively recorded. 

Our Saviour, we know, was born near the end of the long reign 
of the first of these Herods ; and the latest and most successful inves- 
tigations of the chronology of Christ's life have taught us to believe 
*;hat it was in the last year of Herod's reign, and close upon that 

« Matt. 2 : 13-23. 



52 THE LIFE OE CHRIST. 

monarch's last illness and death, that the birth at Bethlehem took 
place. The terrible malady which made his closing scene not less 
awful than that of his grandson Agrippa had already begun its work, 
and given forewarning of the fatal issue. He was in a moody, suspi- 
cious, vengeful state of feeling. His reign had long been outwardly 
biilliant and prosperous. He had defeated all the schemes of his 
political opponents. With a firm and cruel hand, he had kept doAvn 
all attempts at intestine revolt. By a large remission of taxation, by 
extraordinary liberality in times of famine, by lavish expenditure on 
public works, the erection of new cities and the rebuilding of the 
temple at Jerusalem, he had sought to dazzle the public eye and 
win the public favor. But nothing could quench the Jewish suspi- 
cion of him as an Eclomite. This suspicion fed upon his attempts to 
introduce and encourage heathen games and pastimes, and grew 
intensely bitter as it watched with what unrelenting hate he perse- 
cuted and cut off all the members of that Maccabean family whose 
throne he had usurped, around whom Jewish gratitude and hope still 
fondly clung. This ill-concealed enmity preyed upon the proud, dark 
spirit of Herod. It taught him to see his deadliest foes in the bosom 
of his own family. Passionately attached to her, he had married tho 
beautiful but ill-fated Mariamne, the daughter of Alexander, one o| 
the Asmonean princes. She inherited the pride and ambition of her 
family; bitterly resenting, as well she might, the secret order which 
she discovered Herod had issued, that ^he should be cut off if he 
failed to secure the throne for himself in the embassage to Kome 
which he undertook after the defeat of Mark Autony, his first patron. 
Her resentment of this order had the worst interpretation put upon 
it, and in the transport of a jealousy in which both personal and 
political elements were combined, Herod ordered her to be beheaded. 
Then followed those transports of remorse which, for a time, bereft 
the frantic prince of reason. Mariamne gone, the father's jealousy 
was directed to his two sons by her, in whose veins the hated Asmo- 
nean blood was flowing. He sent for Antipater, his son by the wife 
he had divorced in order to marry Mariamne, and set him up as their 
rival and his successor. But the popular favor clung to Alexander 
and Aristobulus, the sons of the murdered Mariamne. Herod's court 
and family became a constant gloomy scene of dissension and dis- 
trust. Charges of treasonable designs on the part of Alexander and 
Aristobulus against his person and government were secretly poured 
into the ear of Herod. Men of inferior rank, supposed to be impli- 
cated, were seized, tortured, and executed, till at last, by their father's 
own order the two young princes, then in the flower of their early 



THE MASSACEE OF THE INNOCENTS. O'J 

manhood, were strangled. Antipater had been the chief instrument in 
urging Herod on to this inhuman deed, and now in that very son whom 
he had done so much for he found the last worst object of his jealous 
wrath. Antipater was proved to have conspired to poison his old, 
doting, diseased, and dying father. He was summoned to Jerusa- 
lem. Herod raised himself from his bed of suffering, and gave tho 
order for his execution. His own death drew on. It maddened him 
to think that there would be none to mourn for him; that at his 
death there would be a general jubilee. The fiendish idea seized 
him, that if there were none who voluntarily would weep for him, 
there should at least be plenty of tears shed at his death; and so 
his last command — a command happily not executed — was, that the 
heads of all the chief families in Judea should be assembled in the 
Hippodrome, and that as soon as it was known that he had drawn 
his last breath they should be mercilessly slaughtered; and thus, his 
body consumed by inward ulcers and his spirit Avith tormenting pas- 
sions, Herod died. 

I have recited thus much of this king's history, that you may see 
in what harmony with his other doings was his massacre of the inno- 
cents at Bethlehem. When he heard of the coming of the Magi and 
of the birth of this new King of the Jews, the sceptre was already 
dropping from his aged and trembling hands.* But as the dying 
hand of avarice clutches its gold the firmer as it feels the hour draw 
on when it must give it up, so did the dying hand of ambition clutch 
the sceptre, and he determined that if he could hold it no longer, he 
would at least try to cut off all who might claim to wield it at hi3 
death. A lifetime's practice had made him a proficient in craft. He 
inquired privily of the wise men as to the time at which the star 
appeared. Had he even then, when he made this inquiry, matured 
his bloody project ; and did he wish, by knowing the precise time of 
the star's appearance, to assure himself of the exact age of the child 
he intended to destroy; or was the inquiry made for the purpose of 
ascertaining whether any like star had been seen anywhere in Judea, 
seeking thus to confirm or invalidate what the wise men said ? This 
only we can say, that if it were but a few days after the birth of Jesus 
that the Magi visited Jerusalem, and if the order that Herod after- 
wards issued to his executioners was founded on the information 
given him as to the time of the star's appearance, then the first 
appearance of the star must have been coincident, not with the birth 
of Jesus, but with the annunciation of that birth to Mary. Herod 
may have fancied from what he learned from the Magi that the child 
* He was seventy years old when he died. 



54 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

must now be about a year old, and giving a broad margin that no 
chance of escape might be given, his order ran that all under two 
years of age should be destroyed. 

Perhaps, however, Herod's only object in his first private inter- 
view with the Magi was to extract from them all the information he 
could, with no precise or definite purpose as to how he should act 
upon the information so obtained. When he told them to go and 
search diligently for the child, and when they had found him, to 
come and bring him word, it was not with any purpose on his part 
to go and worship him ; in saying that he meant to do so, we may 
well believe him to have been playing the hypocrite ; but neither 
may it have been with an already fixed resolution to act as he after- 
wards did. But the wise men did not return; he ascertained that 
they had been in Bethlehem, that they had left that place, that with- 
out coming to see him and report as to the result of their search, 
they were already beyond his reach on their way back to their dis- 
tant home. The birth was, by this very circumstance, made all tho 
surer in his eyes, and to his natural alarm at such a birth, there was now 
added bitter chagrin at being mocked in this way by these strangers. 
Had they seen through the mask which he imagined he had fash- 
ioned so artfully and worn so well ? Nothing galls the crarfty more 
than when their craft is discovered, and the discovery is turned 
against themselves. Angry with the men who had treated him thus, 
Herod is angry, too, with himself for having given them the oppor- 
tunity to outwit him. Why had he not sent some of his own trusty 
servants with them to Bethlehem ? Why had he been so foolish as 
to trust these foreigners? Irritated at them, irritated at himself, 
determined that this child shall not escape, he sends his bandits out 
upon their bloody errand. 

That errand was to be quickly and stealthily executed. In so 
small a village as Bethlehem, and in the thinly scattered population 
which lay around it, there could be but a few male infants under two 
years old. It is but one of the dreams of the middle-age imagina- 
tion which has swelled the numbers of the slaughtered to thousands ; 
one or two dozens would be nearer to the mark. A few practised 
hands such as Herod could easily secure would have little diffi- 
culty in finishing their work in the course of one forenoon. It was 
spring-time of the year;* the parents were busy in the fields; ihe 
unprotected homes lay open. Before any concerted resistance could 
be offered, half the childrer might be slain. Every precaution, we 

* It has been accurately ascertained that Herod must have died between the 
13th March and the 4th April, Y5u a. o. a. 



THE MASSACFvE OF THE INNOCENTS. 55 

may believe, was taken by Herod that it should not be known at 
whose instance the deed was done. He was too wily a politician to 
make any such public manifestation of his vindictive alarm as his 
sending forth a company of executioners, clothed visibly with the 
royal authority, would have made. But secretly, promptly, vigor- 
ously as his measures were taken, they came too late. When told 
that not a male child of the specified age had been permitted to 
escape, he may have secretly congratulated himself on that peril to 
his government being thus summarily set aside. But an eye more 
vigilant than his was watching over the safety of the infant Jqsus. 
In a dream of the night the angel of the Lord had appeared io 
Joseph ; told him of the impending peril, and specially directed him 
as to the manner of escape. Without an hour's delay, the warning 
given was acted on. The journey from Bethlehem to the nearest 
part of Egypt was soon performed,, and secured from the stroke of 
Herod's bandits and placed beyond the after-reach of Herod's wrath, 
the child was safe. The flight was hasty, and the sojourn in Egypt 
was but short.* The way for the return was open, and in fulfilment 
of his promise, the angel came to Joseph to tell him that they were 
dead who sought the young child's life. Struck by all the circum- 
stances which had accompanied the birth there, Joseph and Mary 
had perhaps resolved to take up their residence in Bethlehem. But 
on entering Judea they heard that though Herod was dead, his son 
Archelaus ruled in his stead ; a prince who early proved that the 
spirit of his father had descended on him, one of the first acts of his 
reign being the slaughter of three thousand of his countrymen in 
Jerusalem. The apprehensions of Joseph were verified by the angel's 
once more appearing to him in a dream, and directing him to pass on 
through Judea, and take up his abode again in Nazareth, a hamlet in 
the province of Galilee. 

In the narrative of this passage of our Lord's infant life as given 
by St. Matthew, two things strike us. 

1, The prominent part assigned to, and assumed by Joseph as the 
earthly guardian of the child ; the frequency, the minuteness, and the 
manner in which these divine intimations were made to him on which 
he acted. In every instance it was in a dream of the night that the 
heavenly warning came. Nor was the warning in any instance vague, 
but remarkably definite and satisfactory. He was told at first not 

* Accepting either the close of the year 749 a. u. o. or the beginning of 750 
A. u. o. os the most probable date of the birth of Christ, and assuming that the 
fisit of the Magi succeeded the presentation in the temple, the stay in Egypt 
xmid hftve been but shoii. 



56 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

simply that danger was at hand; he was told specifically what that 
danger was: " Herod will seek the young child to destroy him." He 
was told not simply to escape from Bethlehem, but to flee into Egypt; 
of Herod's death he got timely information, and while hesitating as 
to what he should do on his return into Judea, he had his doubts 
removed and his fears allayed by another divine direction. Are we 
wrong in interpreting the heavenly messenger's manner of acting 
towards the foster-parent of our Saviour as indicative of a very 
watchful and tender solicitude on Joseph's part for the safety of that 
strange child to whom he was united by so strange a tie ? He ap- 
pears as the heaven-appointed, heaven-instructed sentinel, set to 
watch over the infant days of the Son of the Highest, chosen for this 
office, and aided in its discharge, not without such regard to his per- 
sonal qualifications as is ordinarily shown under the divine govern- 
ment in the selection of fit agents for each part of the earthly work. 
We are led thus to think of him as taking an almost more than 
paternal interest in the babe committed to his care, thinking about 
him so much and so anxiously by day that his dreams by night are 
of him, and that it is in these dreams the angel comes to give the 
needed guidance, and to seal, as it were, by the divine approval the 
watchful care by which the dreams had been begotten. And we are 
the more disposed to think thus favorably of Joseph as we reflect 
upon the peculiar relationship in which he stood to Jesus, and re- 
member that this is the only glimpse we get of the manner in which 
the duties of that relationship were discharged. In the. record of our 
Lord's ministry he never appears. The conclusion seems natural that 
he had died before that ministry began. It is only in his connection 
with the birth and infancy and childhood of Jesus that any sight of 
Joseph is obtained, and it pleases us to think that he who was hon- 
ored to be the guardian of that sacred life in the first great peril to 
which it was exposed, w r as one not unworthy of the trust, but who 
lovingly, faithfully, tenderly executed it. 

2. In reading this portion of the gospel of St. Matthew, we are 
struck with the frequent references to the history and prophecies of 
the Old Testament. Such references are peculiar to St. Matthew, 
and they are due to the character of those to whom his gospel was 
especially addressed, and to the object he had especially in view. His 
gospel was written for converted Jews, and his great aim was fcc 
present to such Jesus Christ as the Messiah promised to their fathers. 
Continually, therefore, throughout his narrative, as almost nowhe v t> 
in the narratives of the other evangelists, he quotes from the Old 
Testament Scriptures with the view of showing how accurately and 



THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS. 57 

completely they were fulfilled in the life and death of Jesus of Naza- 
reth. The very formula, " that it might be fulfilled," is peculiar to 
the first gospel. The method thus followed by St. Matthew was ad- 
mirably fitted to soothe the prejudices of Jewish converts, and estab- 
lish them in a true faith in Christ. Thus it is that in the passage 
cow before us, he attempts to obviate objections that might naturally 
arise in Jewish minds, on then being told of such events — to them so 
untoward and unlooked for — in the life of the infant Messiah as his 
being forced to find a temporary retreat in the land of Egypt, the 
slaughter of so many infants on his account, and the fixing of his 
abode in a remote hamlet of Galilee. Nothing could be more calcu- 
lated to allay any prejudice created by the recital of such incidents 
than to point to parallel or analogous ones in the history of ancient 
Israel. The three citations of this kind which Sfc. Matthew makes 
differ somewhat in their character. Of only one of them is it cer- 
tain that there was a literal fulfilment of a prophecy uttered with im- 
mediate and direct reference to Christ. He came and dwelt, it is 
said, in Nazareth, " that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by 
the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene." Yet it is singular that 
this prophecy, which was obviously one spoken directly of the Mes- 
siah, is nowhere to be found in the Old Testament Scriptures as they 
now are in our hands. But this hinders not our belief that by some 
one or other of the ancient prophets the words that St. Matthew 
quotes had been spoken. As Jude recites and verifies a prophecy of 
Enoch of which otherwise Ave should have been ignorant, as St. Paul 
reports a saying of our Lord which otherwise should not have been 
preserved, so St. Matthew here records a prophecy which but for his 
citation of it would have perished. 

It is different, however, with the other two citations from ancient 
prophecy. These we can readily lay our hands upon, and in doing 
so become convinced that St. Matthew did not and could not mean 
to assert that in the events which he related they had directly and 
literally been verified. His object was rather to declare — and that 
was sufficient — that the incidents to which those old prophecies did 
in the first instance refer, were not only kindred in character, but 
were typical or symbolically prophetic of those which he was describ- 
ing in the life of Jesus. He quotes thus a part of that verse in the 
llti chapter of Hosea which runs thus: "When Israel was a child, 
then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt." If that ancient 
Israel of which the Lord said, "He is my son," "He is my first- 
born," while yet he was as it were but an infant, was carried down 
into and thereafter brought safe out of Egypt, was it a strange thing 



58 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

that He who was Jehovah's own and only Son, the First-born among 
many brethren, of whom and of whose church that Israel was a type, 
should in his infancy have to pass through a like ordeal of persecu- 
tion and of deliverance? The point of the fulfilment of the prophecy 
her6 alleged does not lie in Hosea's having Christ actually and per- 
sonally in his eye when he penned the words quoted by St. Matthew, 
but in the fact related by Hosea having a typical reference to a like 
fact in that after history which stands shadowed forth throughout in 
the outward history of ancient Israel. 

It is in the same way that we are to understand the quotation 
from the 31st chapter of the prophecies of Jeremiah. It is in direct 
connection with his statement of the fact that Herod sent forth and 
slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, from two years old and 
under, that St. Matthew says, "Then was fulfilled that which was 
spoken by Jeremy the prophet." " Matthew," says Calvin, " does not 
mean that the prophet had predicted what Herod should do, but that 
at the advent of Christ that mourning was renewed which many ages 
before the children of Benjamin had made." Primarily the words of 
the prophet referred to the carrying away of a large portion of the 
tribes of Benjamin and Judah captives to Babylon. In describing 
the bitter grief with which the heart of the country was then smitten, 
Jeremiah, by a figure as bold as it is picturesque and impressive, 
summons the long-buried Rachel, the mother of Benjamin, from her 
grave, representing her as roused from the sleep of ages to bewail the 
captivity of her children. But Bachel's grave lay near to Bethlehem, 
and now another bitter woe had come upon the land in the murder 
of those innocents in that village ; and what more natural than that 
St. Matthew should revive, re-appropriate, and re-apply that image of 
Jeremiah, representing Rachel as anew issuing from her tomb to weep 
over these her slaughtered children. 

But there was something more here than a mere apposite applica- 
tion to a scene of recent sorrow of a poetical image that originally 
referred to the grief caused by the captivity. That very grief which 
filled the land of Judah may have been intended to prefigure the 
lamentation that now filled Bethlehem and all its borders. Bachel 
rising from her tomb, and filling the air then with her lamentations, 
may have been meant to stand as a type or representative of these 
mothers of Bethlehem, all torn in heart by the snatching of their 
little ones from their struggling arms and the killing of them before 
their eyes. If it be so, then that passage in Jeremiah speaks of some- 
thing more than of the mere suffering inflicted and the sorrow it pro- 
Iiioed. The weeping Bachel is not suffered to weep on, to weep out 



THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS. 59 

her grief. There are words of comfort for her in her tears. There is 
a message from the Lord to her that speaks in no ambiguous terms 
of the after destiny, the future restoration of those children so rudely 
torn from their maternal embrace. For what are the words which 
immediately follow those which St. Matthew has quoted: "Thus saitl 
the Lord, Kefrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears 
for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord ; and they shall come 
again from the land of the enemy. And there is hope in thine end, 
saith the Lord, that thy children shall come again to their own bor- 
der." If we have any right to apply this part of the prophecy to this 
incident of the evangelic history, then may we take the words that I 
have quoted as carrying with them the assurance that those children 
who perished under the stroke of Herod's hirelings died not spiritual- 
ly ; that they shall come again from the land of the last enemy, come 
again with Him whose birth was so mysteriously connected with their 
death. We know that those infants, whose ghastly remains the weep- 
ing mothers gathered up to lay in their untimely graves, shall rise 
again in the resurrection at the last day. To them that resurrection, 
itself a fruit of the Saviour's advent, must come as a boon, a benefit, 
not as a bane or curse. They will rise to eternal life. To believe 
otherwise of them, and of all who die in infancy, would be to believe 
that those who are called away from this world while yet the first 
dewdrops of life are on them, are placed thereby in a worse condi- 
tion than that in which it is the declared purpose of the gospel to 
place all mankind. It is a belief which we cannot adopt. Our assur- 
ance is clear, and, as we think, well grounded— though these grounds 
we cannot now pause to unfold — that all who die in infancy are saved. 
Distinguished among them all, let us believe this of those slaughtered 
babes of Bethlehem. Their fate was singularly wrapped up with that 
of the infant Saviour. The stroke that fell on them was meant for him ; 
the sword of persecution which swept so mercilessly in many an after 
age through the ranks of Christ's little ones was first reddened in 
their blood. The earliest victims to hatred of the Nazarene — if not 
consciously and willingly, yet actually dying for him — let us count 
them as the first martyrs for Jesus, and let us believe that in them 
the truth of the martyrs' motto was first made good, "Near to the 
sword, near to God." u O blessed infants!" exclaims Augustine; 
" He who at his birth had angels to proclaim him, the heavens to tes- 
tify, and Magi to worship him, could surely have prevented that these 
should have died for him, had he not known that they died not in 
thai- death, but rather lived in higher bliss." 



SO THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

VI. 

The Thirty Years at Nazareth — Christ Among 
The Doctors.* 

Up among the hills of Galilee, in a basin surrounded by swelling 
eminences, which shut it in on every side, lies the little village of 
Nazareth. Its name does not occur in Old Testament history. Jose- 
ph us never mentions it, though he speaks of places lying all around 
it. Its inhabitants were not worse than their neighbors, nor exposed 
on account of their character to any particular comtempt, yet Natha- 
nael, himself a Galilean, could say, "Can there any good thing come 
out of Nazareth?" so small and insignificant was the place. It was 
here, as in a fit retreat, that the childhood, youth, and early manhood 
of our Lord passed quietly and unnoticed away. Those thirty years 
of the life of the Son of God upon this earth, how deeply hidden from 
us do they he ! how profound the silence regarding them which the 
sacred writers preserve! a silence all the more remarkable when we 
consider how natural and strong is our desire to know something, to 
be told something of the earlier days of any one who, at some after 
period of his life, has risen to distinction. But all that here is told us 
of the first twelve years of our Saviour's life is that the child grew, 
waxed strong in spirit, was filled with wisdom, and that the grace of 
God was upon him. Had any of those wonders which attended his 
birth been renewed, had any thing supernatural occurred in the 
course of those years, we may presume it would have been related or 
alluded to. Nothing of that kind we may infer did happen. Out- 
wardly and inwardly the growth of Jesus under Mary's care at Naz- 
areth, obeyed the common laws under which human infancy and 
childhood are developed. Beyond that gentle patience which noth- 
ing could ruffle, that simple truthfulness which nothing could turn 
aside ; beyond that love which was always ready to give back smile 
for smile to Mary and the rest around, and to go forth rejoicingly on 
its little errands of kindness within the home of the carpenter; be- 
yond that wisdom which, wonderful as it was, was childlike wisdom 
still, growing as his years grew, and deriving its increase from all 
the common sources which lay open to it ; beyond the charm of all 
the graces of childhood in their full beauty and in their unsullied per- 
fection — there was nothing externally to distinguish his first twelve 
years. So we conclude from the absence of all notices of them in tk« 

• Luke 2 : 40-52. 



THE THIETY YEAKS AT NAZAEETH. 61 

gospel narrative. Of the void thus left, however, the Christian church 
became early impatient. Many attempts were made to fill it up. In 
the course of the first four centuries numerous pseudo-gospels were in 
circulation, a long list of which has been made up out of references to 
them which occur in the preserved writings of that period.* Some of 
these apocryphal gospels are still extant, two of them entitled the 
Gospel of the Infancy ; and it is very curious to notice how those suc- 
ceeded who tried to lift the veil which covers the earlier years of 
Christ. One almost feels grateful that such early attempts were 
made to fill up the blank which the four Evangelists have left.f 
They enable us to cootrast the simplicity, and naturalness and con- 
sistency of all that the Evangelists have recorded of Christ, with such 
empty and unmeaning tales. They do more. These apocryphal gos- 
pels were written by men who wished to honor Christ in all they said 
about him ; by men who had that portraiture of his character before 
them which the four gospels supply ; and yet we find them narrating, 
as being in what seemed to them entire harmony with tliat character, 
that when boys interrupted Jesus in his play, or ran against him in 
the street of the village, he looked upon them and denounced them, 
and they fell down and died. It was said, I believe by Eousseau, that 
the conception and delineation of such a character as that of the 
man Christ Jesus, by such men as the fishermen of Galilee, would 
have been a greater miracle than the actual existence of such a man. 
In these apocryphal gospels we have a singular confirmation o± that 
saying; we have the proof that men better taught, many of them, 
than the apostles, even when they had the full delineation of the 

Q See Jones on the Canon. 

f These Gospels of the Infancy of our Lord are full of miracles of the most 
frivolous description, miracles represented as wrought first by the simple pres- 
ence of the infant, by the clothes he wore, the water in which he was washed, 
wrought afterwards by the Son of Mary himself as he grew up at Nazareth, many 
alleged incidents of his boyhood there being gravely related : as when we are told 
that he and the other children of the village went out to play together, busying 
themselves in making clay into the shapes of various birds and beasts, where- 
upon Jesus commanded his beasts to walk, his birds to fly, and so excelled them 
all ; or again, when we are told that passing by a dyer's shop he saw many pieces 
of cloth laid out to be dyed, all of which he took and flung into a neighboring 
furnace, throwing the poor owner of the shop into an agony of consternation and 
grief, and then pleasantly relieving him by drawing all the pieces out of the fur- 
nace each one now of the very color which had been desired. Such are the speci- 
mens, chosen chiefly because they are the least absurd of the many which are 
recorded in these gospels. It was thus, as these writers would exhibit it, thai 
the early boyhood of our Lord was spent ; it was by miracles such as those whidb 
I have recited, that he even then distinguished himself. 



62 THE LIFE OF OHEIST. 

manliood of Jesus in their hands, could not attempt a fancy sketch of 
his childhood without not only violating our sense of propriety, by 
attributing to him the most puerile and unmeaning displays of divine 
power, but shocking our moral sense, and falsifying the very picture 
they had before their eyes, by attributing to him acts of vengeance. 

Joseph and Mary "went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of 
the Passover.'' The Mosaic law required that all the male inhab- 
itants of Judea should go up three times yearly to the capital, to 
keep the three great festivals of the Passover, Pentecost, and Taber- 
nacles. A later Rabbinical authority had laid an injunction upon 
women to attend the feast of the Passover. Living as they did in so 
remote a part of the country, it is probable that the parents of our 
Lord satisfied themselves with going up together once yearly to Jeru- 
salem; Joseph thus doing less, and Mary more than the old law 
enjoined. When Jesus was twelve years old, Joseph and Mary took 
him up with them to Jerusalem. He had then reached that age, 
when, according to Jewish reckoning, he crossed the line which 
divides childhood from youth, got the new name of a son of the Lord, 
and had he been destined to any public office, would have passed into 
the hands of the Rabbis for the higher instructions which their 
schools supplied. Jesus, however, had received no other instruction 
than the village school, attached to the synagogue at Nazareth, had 
supplied, and was destined to no higher employment than that of the 
trade his father followed. The purpose of Joseph and Mary in 
taking him up with them to Jerusalem was not that he might be 
placed at the feet of Gamaliel, or any other of the great distinguish- 
ed teachers of the metropolis, but simply that he might see the horj 
city, and take part with them in the sacred services of the Pass- 
over. 

There a new world opened to the boy's wondering eyes. With 
what interest must he have looked around, when first he trod the 
courts of the temple, and gazed upon the ministering priests, the 
altar with its bleeding sacrifice and rising incense, the holy place, and 
the secret shrine that lay behind the veil. The places, too, of which 
we shall have to speak immediately, where youths of his own age 
were to be found, would not be left unvisited. What thoughts were 
stirred within his breast by all these sights, it becomes us not even 
to attempt to imagine. The key is not in our hands with which we 
might unlock the mysteries of his humanity at this stage of its devel- 
(/pment. He has himself so far unveiled his thoughts and feelings 
as to teach us how natural it was that he should linger in the holy 
city, and undei the power of a new attraction feel for a day or two an 



THE THIETY YEAKS AT NAZARETH. 63 

if the ties that bound him to Nazareth and to his home there were 
broken. 

The seven days of the feast went by. It had been a crowded 
procession from Galilee which Joseph and Mary had joined. Galilee 
was then, as Josephus informs us, very thickly populated, studded 
with no less than two hundred and forty towns, containing each 
fifteen thousand inhabitants or more, sending forth in the war with 
the Eomans an army of no less than one hundred thousand men. 
The separate companies which this crowded population sent up at 
the Passover time to Jerusalem would each be large, and as the 
youths of the company consorted and slept near one another in the 
course of the journey, it is the less surprising that, on leaving Jerusa- 
lem to return to Nazareth, Joseph and Mary should not during the 
day have missed their son, who had stayed behind, nor have become 
aware of his absence till they sought for him among his companions 
when they rested for the night. The discovery was a peculiarly dis- 
tressing one. What if some oversight had been committed by them? 
if they had failed to tell their son of the time of the departure, if they 
had failed to notice whether he was among the other youths before 
they left the city? They had such confidence in that child, who 
never before in a single instance had done any thing to create anxiety 
or distrust; they were so sure that he would be where, as they 
thought, he ought to be, that they had scarcely felt perhaps an ordi- 
nary degree of parental solicitude. And where could he now be; 
what could have happened to him? Their eager inquiries would 
probably soon satisfy them that he had not fallen aside by the way, 
that he had never joined the returning travellers, that he must have 
remained behind in Jerusalem. But with whom? for what? He 
knew no friends there with whom to stay. Had some accident be- 
fallen him ? was he detained against his will ? Did any one at Jeru- 
salem know the secrets of his birth ; were there any there who still 
sought the young child's life? Herod was dead; Archelaus was 
banished; the parents themselves had not been in Jerusalem since 
the time they had presented the infant in the temple. It was noi 
likely they should be recognized ; none of their friends at Nazareth 
knew about the mysteries of the conception and the birth. They 
had thought there was no risk in taking Jesus with them, but now 
their hearts are full of dark forebodings; some one may have known, 
may have told ; some secret design may stiil have been cherished 
Where was their child, and what had happened to him? 

You may imagine what a night of sleepless anxiety followed their 
discovery at the first nightly resting-place of the caravan. Midday 



64t THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

saw them hack in the city. It is said to have "been after three days 
search they found him; if we count the day of their return as one of 
these three, there would still be one entire day's fruitless search. 
There may have been two such days — days of eager inquiry every- 
where throughout the city, in the house where they had lived, among 
all those with whom they had had any converse or connection. At 
last they find the lost one, not in the courts of the temple, not in 
any of those parts of the edifice consecrated to public worship, tut 
in one of those apartments in the outer buildings used as a school of 
the Kabbis. Among the Jews at this period, each synagogue had a 
schoolroom attached to it, in which the rudiments of an ordinary 
education were taught. Besides, however, these schools for primary 
instruction, wherever there were ten men in a position to devote their 
whole time to this purpose, a room was built for them, in which they 
carried on their pupils in all the higher walks of the sacred learning 
of the Jews. These constituted the schools of the Rabbis, and 
formed an important instrument in the support and extension of that 
system of Rabbinism which, as Milman tells us, "became, after the 
ruin of the temple, and the extinction of public worship, a new bond 
of national union, and the great distinctive feature in the character 
of modern Judaism." There were three apartments employed in this 
way attached to the temple. It was in one of these that Joseph and 
Mary found their son. He was sitting in the ordinary attitude, and 
engaged in the ordinary exercises of a pupil in the middle of the 
doctors, hearing them and asking them questions — the Jewish method 
of education being chiefly catechetical — the pupil himself sometimes 
answering the questions put, and astonishing his hearers with his 
wisdom. When this strange, plain-looking, bright-looking, solemn- 
looking Galilean boy first came in among them, was it the wisdom he 
then showed which drew the hearts of some of these Rabbis to him, 
and led them, as if anxious to gain a scholar who might turn out to 
be the chief ornament of their school, to take him in and treat him 
tenderly? Was it with them, in the room they occupied in the outer 
temple buildings, that the two nights in which Jesus was separate;! 
from his parents were spent ? The tie, whatever it was, between him 
and them, is now destined to be broken, never to be renewed. 

Joseph and Mary find him in the midst of them. Joseph is too 
much astonished to say any thing, nor is it likely that Mary spoke' 
till he had gone with her apart; but now her burdened mother's 
heart finds utterance. "Son," she says to him, " why hast thou thus 
dealt with us?" words of reproach that were new to Mary's lips. 
Never before had she to chide that child. Never before had he done 



THE THIRTY YEARS AT NAZARETH. 65 

any thing to require such chiding. But now, when it appears that 
qo accident had happened, no restraint had been exercised, that it 
bad been of his own free will that Jesus had parted from his parents, 
and was sitting so absorbed by other persons and with other things, 
she cannot account for such conduct on his part. It looks like neg- 
lect, and worse ; like indifference to the pain which he must have 
known this separation would cost them. "Son," she says, "why hast 
thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee 
Borrowing." 

Innocently, artlessly, childishly, in words which, though not meant 
to meet the reproach with a rebuke, yet carried with them much of 
the meaning and effect of the words spoken afterwards at the mar- 
riage-feast at Cana, Jesus answers, "How is it that ye sought me? 
could you, Mary, believe that I would act under other than heavenly 
guidance ; could you allow the idea of my being liable to any risk or 
danger simply because I was not under your eye and care ; do you 
not know, were you not told whose Son I truly am ; and should not 
chat knowledge have kept you from seeking and sorrowing as you 
. have done ; wist you not, that wherever I was I must have been still 
beneath that Father's eye and care — whatever I was about, I must 
have been about that Father's business ? Mary, you have called me 
Son, and I acknowledge the relationship ; you have called Joseph my 
father; that relationship I disown; my own, my only Father is He in 
whose house you have now found me, whose will I came on earth to 
do ; about whose matters I must constantly, and shall now hence- 
forth and for ever be engaged." 

It is in this consciousness of his peculiar relationship to God, now 
for the first time, perhaps, fully realized, that we catch the true 
meaning, and can discern something of the purpose of this early, only 
recorded incident in the history of our Lord's youth. Mary, we are 
. told, understood not the answer of her son. With the knowledge 
that she possessed, we can scarcely imagine that she had any diffi- 
culty in at once perceiving that Jesus spake of his Father in heaven, 
! and comprehending in so far at least the meaning of his words. But 
(here may have been a special reason for Mary's surprise here — the 
difficulty she felt of comprehension and belief. It cannot readily be 
liraagined that she had herself told her child during the first twelve 
I years of his life, or that any one else had told him, of the mystery of 
J' lis birth. From the first dawning of conscious intelligence, he must 
^ave been taught to call Joseph father, nor had it outwardly been 
>mu ^unicated to him that he was only his reputed father, that 
e ^ jrf no ^^hly parent, that his true and only father was God. If 



6Q THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

that were the actual state of the connection between Mary and Jesus 
up to the time of this incident in the temple; if she had never 
breathed to him the great secret that he was none other than the 
Son of the Highest ; if there had been nothing, as she knew there was 
not, in the quiet tenor of the life which for twelve years Jesus lived, 
to afford any outward indication or evidence, either to himself or 
others, of the nature of his Sonship to God — then how surprised 
must Mary have been when in the temple, and by that answer to 
her question, Jesus informed her that he knew all, knew whence he 
wa^j knew for what he came, knew that God was his Father in such 
a sense that the discharge of his business carried with it an obligation 
which, if the time and the season required, overbore all obligation to 
real or reputed earthly parents. 

But whether it came upon Mary by surprise or not, was there no 
object in letting us and all believers in the Saviour know, as the 
record of this incident does, that Jesus was thus early and fully alive 
to the singularity of his relationship to God? Conceive that it had 
been otherwise ; that these thirty years had been veiled in an impen- 
etrable obscurity ; that not one single glimpse had been given of how 
they passed away; that our first sight of the man Christ Jesus had 
been when he stood before John to be baptized in the waters of the 
Jordan, and to receive the Holy Ghost descending upon him. How 
natural in that case had been the impression that it was then for the 
first time, when the voice from heaven declared it, that he knew him- 
self to be the Son of God ; that it was then, when the Spirit first 
descended, that the Divine associated itself in close and ineffable 
union with the human. Then had those thirty years appeared in a 
quite different light to us ; then had we conceived of him as living 
throughout their course the simple common life of a Galilean villager 
and craftsman. But now we know, and we have to thank this narra- 
tive of St. Luke for the information, that if not earlier, yet certainly 
at his twelfth year, the knowledge that he and the Father were one, 
that the Father was in him, and that he was in the Father, had 
visited and filled his spirit, had animated and regulated his life. 
With what a new sacredness and dignity do the eighteen years that 
intervened between this incident and that of his public manifestation 
to Israel become invested, and what new lessons of instruction do 
they bring us. At the bidding of a new impulse, excited within his 
youthful breast by this first visit to the temple, he breaks for a da? 
or two all earthly bonds, and seems lost amid the shadows of the 
Sanctuary, absorbed in the higher things of Him who was worshipped 
there. But at the call of duty, his hour for public service, fox speak- 



THE THIETY TEARS AT NAZARETH. 67 

uig, acting, suffering, dying, before all, and for all, not yet come, he 
yields at once to the desire of Joseph and Mary, and returns with 
them to Nazareth; becoming subject to them, burying, as it were, 
this great secret in his breast ; consenting to wait, submitting to all 
lb 3 restraints of an ordinary household, putting himself once more 
ander the yoke of parental authority, taking upon him all the com- 
mon obligations of a son, a brother, a neighbor, a friend, a Galilean 
villager, a Jewish citizen; disci larging ail without a taint of sin; 
travelling not an inch beyond the routine of service expected in these 
relationships ; doing absolutely nothing to betray the divinity that 
lay within, nothing to distinguish hiinself above others, or proclaim 
his heavenly birth; living so naturally, unostentatiously, undemon- 
stratively, that neither did his brethren, the inmates of his home, his 
own nearest relatives believe in him, discerning not in ail those years 
any marks of his divine prophetic character; his name so little known 
in the immediate neighborhood that Nathanael, who lived in Cana, 
a few miles off, had never heard of him, and was quite unprepared 
to believe Philip, when he told him, that in one Jesus of Nazareth 
he had found him of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, 
did write. 

From the bosom of that thick darkness which covers the first 
thirty years of our Lord's earthly life, there thus shines forth the 
light which irradiates- the whole period, and sheds over it a lustre 
brighter than ever graced the life of any other of the children of men. 
You may have wondered at this one event of his childhood being 
redeemed from oblivion, so insignificant does it seem, and at first 
sight so little correspondent with our preconceived conceptions of the 
great Messiah's character and work. Looking at Jesus as nothing 
more than the son of Joseph and Mary, there might be some diffi- 
culty in explaining his desertion of them at Jerusalem. But when 
you reflect on his self-recognition at this time as the Son of God ; on 
his declaration of it to Mary; on his thenceforth acting on it in life; 
>n his words in the temple, followed by eighteen years of self-denial, 
and gentle, cheerful, prompt obedience; on his growing conscious- 
ness of his divine lineage, and his earthly work and heavenly heri- 
tage ; on the evils he came on earth to expose and remedy ; on the 
selfishness, the worldliness, the formalism, the hypocrisy he detected 
all around him at Nazareth ; when you reflect further on his divine 
reticence, on his sublime and patient self-restraint, on his refraining 
from all interference in public matters, and all exposure to public 
notice, on his devoting himself instead to the tasks of daily duty in a 
very humble sphere of life ; when you reflect fixedly and thoughtfully 



68 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

on these things, do you not feel that there rests on this portion of the 
life of Jesus, and upon its introductory and explanatory incident, an 
interest different indeed in kind, yet in full and perfect harmony m ith 
that belonging to the period when he stood forth as the Saviout of 
the world? If he came to empty himself of that glory which he had 
with the Father before the world was, to take upon him the form of 
a servant, to seek not his own glory, to do not his own will, not to be 
ministered unto but to minister, then assuredly it was not only during 
the three years of his public ministry, but during all the three-asd- 
fchirty years of his life on earth, that the ends of his mission were 
accomplished. 

We think, I apprehend, too little of these quiet domestic years of 
secluded unpretending piety at Nazareth. Our eyes are dazzled by 
the outward glory which surrounded his path when he burst at last 
from his long concealment, and showed himself as the Son of the 
Highest ; and yet there is a sense in which we should have more 
interest in the earlier than in the later period of his life. It is liker 
the life we have ourselves to lead. The Jesus of Nazareth is more of 
a pattern to us than the Jesus of Gethsemane and the cross. He was 
aot less the Son of God in the one case than in the other ; not less in 
the one character than in the other has he left us an example that 
we should follow his steps. It was thus the great lesson of his life 
at Nazareth, as interpreted by his sayings in the temple, that we 
should be doing our Father's business in the counting-house, in the 
workshop, at the desk, as much as in any of the higher or more pub- 
lic walks of Christian or philanthropic effort ; that a life confined and 
devoted to the faithful execution of the simple, humble offices of daily 
domestic duty, if n be a life of faith and love, may be one as full of 
God, as truly divine and holy, as Christ-like and as honoring to 
Christ, as a life devoted to the most important public services that 
can be rendered to the church on earth. In the quiet and deep-lying 
valleys of life, all hidden from human eye, who may tell us how many 
there are, who, built up in a humble trust in Jesus, and animated by 
their hope in him, are performing cheerfully their daily tasks because 
a Father's wisdom has allotted them, and bearing patiently their 
daily burdens because they have been imposed by a Father's love ? 
Content to live and labor, and endure and die, unnoticed and un- 
known, earthly fame hanging ro wreath upon their tomb, earthlj 
eloquence dumb over their dust, these are they, the last among m*n, 
who shall be among the first in the kingdom of the just. 



THE EOBERUNNEH. 63 

VII. 

The Forerunner.* 

The same angel who announced to Mary at Nazareth the birth ol 
Jesus, had six months previously announced the birth of John to the 
aged priest Zacharias, as he ministered before the altar, within the 
temple at Jerusalem. Zacharias was informed that his wife Elisa- 
beth shoidd have a son, whose name was to be John, who was to be 
"great in the sight of the Lord," going before him "in the spirit and 
power of Elias, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." 
Zacharias doubted what the angel said. At once as a punishment ol 
his incredulity, and as a new token of the truth of the angelic mes- 
sage, he was struck with a temporary dumbness. When he came 
forth he could not tell his brother priests or the assembled people 
any thing about what he had seen or heard within. From the signs 
he made, and the strange awe-struck expression of his countenance, 
they fancied he had seen a vision ; but it is not likely that he took 
any means of correcting whatever false ideas they entertained. His 
one wish was to get home and revea) the secret to his wife Elisabeth. 
His days of ministration lasted but a week, and as soon as they were 
over, he hastened to his residence in the hill country of Judea. In 
due time what Gabriel had foretold took place. The child was born. 
The eighth day, the day for its circumcision and the bestowing of its 
name, arrived. A large circle of relatives assembled. They proposed 
that the child should be called Zacharias, after his father. Foresee- 
ing that some such proposal might be made, Zacharias had provided 
against any other name than that assigned by the angel being given 
to his son. Acting upon his instructions, Elisabeth interposed, and 
declared that the child's name should be John. The relatives re- 
monstrated. None of her kindred, they reminded her, had ever borne 
that Dame. The dumb father was now by signs appealed to. He 
called for a writing-table, and wrote the few decisive words, "His 
name is John." They were ail wondering at the prompt and peremp- 
tory settlement of this question, when another and greater ground of 
wonder was supplied : the tongue of the dumb was loosed, and, in 
rapt, rhythmical, prophetic strains that remind us forcibly of those in 
which, three months before, and in the same dwelling, Mary and 
Elisabeth had exchanged their greetings, he poured out fervent thanks 
to God for having visited and redeemed his people, and foretold the 

* Luke 1 : 1-18 ; Matt. 3 : 1-12 ; Mark 1 : IS. 



TO THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

high office which his own newborn son was to execute as Forerunnei 
of the Messiah. 

"With that scene of the circumcision day the curtain drops upon 
the household of Zacharias and Elisabeth ; nor is it lifted till many 
years are gone, and then it is the child only, now grown to manhood 
who appears. His parents had been well stricken in years at the 
date of his birth, and as no mention of them is made afterwards, we 
may presume that, like Joseph, they were dead before any tiling 
remarkable in the life of their son had happened. Little as we know 
of the first thirty years of the life of Jesus, we know still less of the 
like period in the life of John. All that we are told is that till the 
time of his showing unto Israel he was in the desert, in those wild 
and lonely regions which lay near his birthplace, skirting the north- 
western shores of the Dead sea. True to the angelic designation, 
accepting the vow that marked him as a Nazarite from his birth, 
John separated himself early from home and kindred, retired from 
the haunts of men, buried himself in the rocky solitudes of the wil- 
derness, letting his hair grow till it fell loose and dishevelled over his 
shoulders, denying himself to all ordinary indulgences whether of 
food or dress, clothing himself with the roughest kind of garment he 
could get, a robe of hair-cloth, bound around him with a leathern 
girdle, satisfying himself by feeding on the locusts and wild honey ol 
the desert. But it was not in a morose or ascetic spirit that he did 
so. He had not fled to those solitudes in chagrin, to nurse upon the 
lap of indolence regrets over bygone disappointments ; nor had he 
sought there to shroud his spirit in a religious gloom deep as that of 
Engedi and Aclullam, which may have been among his haunts. His 
whole appearance and bearing, words and actions, when at last he 
stood forth before the people, satisfy us that there was little in him 
of the mystic, the misanthrope, or the monk. Though dwelling 
apart from others, avoiding observation, and shunning promiscuous 
intercourse, he was not wasting those years in idleness, heedless 
of the task for the performance of which the life he led was intend- 
ed, as we presume he must have been informed by his parents, to 
prepare him. Through the loopholes of retreat we can well imagine 
the Baptist as busily scanning the state of that community upon 
which he was to act. When he stepped forth from his retirement, 
and men of all kinds and classes gathered round him, he did not need 
any one to tell him who the Pharisees, or the Sadducees, or the pub- 
licans were, or what were their peculiar and distinctive errors. He 
appears from the first to have been well informed as to the state of 
things outside the desert. It may, in truth, in no small measure have 



THE FORERUNNER. 71 

served to fit him for his peculiar work that — removed from all the 
influences which must have served, had he lived among them, to 
blunt his sense of surrounding evils, and to mould his character and 
habits according to the prevailing forms and fashions of Jewish life — 
he was carried by the Spirit into the desert to be trained and educa- 
ted there, thence, as from a watch-tower, to look down upon those 
strange sights which his country was presenting, undistractedly to 
watch, profoundly to muse and meditate, the fervor of a true prophet 
of the Lord kindling and glowing into an intenser fire of holy zeal ; 
till at last, when the hour for action came, he launched forth upon 
his brief earthly work with a swift impetuosity, like the rush of those 
short-lived cataracts, yet with a firmness of unbending will and pur- 
pose, like the stability of those rocky heights among which for thirty 
years he had been living. 

But what had those thirty years in the current of Jewish history 
presented ? At their beginning those intestine wars which previously 
had somewhat weakened the Roman power, had closed in the peace- 
ful establishment of the empire under Augustus Caesar. The dangers 
to Jewish liberty grew all the greater, and the impatience of the peo- 
ple under the Roman yoke became the more intense; the extreme 
patriot party, who were in favor with the people generally, became 
fanatic in their zeal. After the death of Herod the Great, while yet 
it remained uncertain whether Augustus would recognize the acces- 
sion of Archelaus to the throne, an insurrection broke out in Jerusa- 
lem, which was only quelled by the slaughter of three thousand of the 
insurgents, and by the ill-omened stoppage of the great Passover fes- 
tival. Augustus, unwilling to lay any heavier yoke on those who 
were already fretting beneath the one they bore, confirmed the will 
of Herod by which he divided his kingdom among his sons, suffered 
the Jews still to have nominally a government of their own, and rec- 
ognized Archelaus as king over Judea and Samaria. His reign was 
a short and troubled one, and at its close Judea and Samaria were 
attached to Syria, made part of a Roman province, and had procu- 
rators or governors from Rome set over them, of whom the sixth in 
order was Pontius Pilate, who entered upon his office about the very 
time when the Baptist began his ministry. The lingering shadows 
of royalty and independence were thus removed. Not content with 
removing them, the usurper intermeddled with the ecclesiastical as 
well as the civil government of Judea. In the Mosaic Institute, the 
high priest, the most important public functionary of the Jews, 
attained his office hereditarily, and held it for life. The emperor 
now claimed and exercised the right of investiture, and appointed 



72 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

and deposed as he pleased. During the period between the death 
oi Herod and the destruction of Jerusalem, we read of twenty-eight 
high priests holding the office in succession, only one of whom retain- 
ed it till his death. This dependence on Home, not only for the 
appointment but for continuance in it, necessarily generated great 
servility on the part of aspirants to the office, and great abuses in 
the manner in which its duties were discharged. A supple, saga- 
cious, venal man, like Annas, though not able to establish himself 
permanently in the chair, was able to secure it in turn for five of his 
sons, for his son-in-law Caiaphas, with whom he was associated at 
the time of the crucifixion, and afterwards for his grandson. Such a 
state of things among the governing authorities fomented t-he popu- 
lar animosity to the foreign rule. The whole country was in a fer- 
ment. Popular outbreaks were constantly occurring. The public 
mind was in such an inflammable condition that any adventurer, dar- 
ing enough and strong enough to raise the standard of revolt, was 
followed by multitudes. Among those insurrectionary chiefs, some 
of whom were of the lowest condition and the most worthless charac- 
ter, Judas of Galilee distinguished himself by his open proclamation 
of the principle that it was not lawful to pay tribute to Caesar, and 
his political creed was adopted by thousands who had not the cour- 
age, as he had, to pay the penalty of their lives in acting it cut. It 
can easily be imagined what a fresh hold their faith and hopes as to 
the foretold Messiah would take upon the hearts of a people thus 
galled and fretted to the uttermost by political discontent. The 
higher views of his character would naturally be swallowed up and 
lost in the conception of him as the great deliverer who was to break 
those hated bonds which bound them, restore the old Theocracy, and 
make Jerusalem, not Koine, the seat and centre of a universal mon- 
archy. 

Such was the state of public affairs and of the public feeling, when 
a voice, loud and thrilling like the voice of a trumpet, issues from the 
desert, saying, " Eepent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." 
Crowds come forth to listen ; they look at the strange man, true son 
of the desert, from whose lips this voice cometh. He has all the 
aspect, he wears the dress of one of their old prophets. They ask 
about him; he is of the priestly order. Some old men begin now to 
remember about his father in the temple, and the strange " sayings 
that were noised abroad through all the hill country of Judea" soon 
after his birth. They listen to his words; it is true he does not 
directly claim divine authority; the old prophetic formula, "Thus 
saith the Lord," he does not employ; he points to nc sign, he worka 



THE FORERUNNER. 73 

no miracle ; ho trusts to the simple power of the summons he makes, 
the prophecy he utters ; yet there is something in the very manner of 
his utterance so prophet-like, that a prophet they cannot help believ- 
ing him to be. There is nothing particularly ingratiating in his call 
to repent, but the announcement that the kingdom of heaven is at 
the door, and that they must all at once arise and prepare for it, 
meets the deepest, warmest wishes of their hearts. It is at hand 
at last, this strange man says — the kingdom for which they have 
so long been waiting; and shall they not go forth to welcome its 
approach and rejoice in its triumphs? The spell of the Baptist's 
preaching, in whatever it lay, was one that operated with a speed and 
a power and to an extent of which we have the parallel only in times 
of the greatest excitement, like those of the Crusades, or of the 
Reformation. " Then went out to him," we are told, " all Judea, and 
they of Jerusalem, and all the region round about Jordan, and were 
baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins." It would seem as 
if with one consent the entire population of the southern part of Pal- 
estine had gathered around the Baptist, and for the time were pliant 
in his hands. It may have facilitated their assemblage if, as has been 
conjectured, it was a Sabbatic year when John began his work, and 
the people, set free from their ordinary labors, were ready to follow 
him, as he led them to the banks of the Jordan to be baptized. 

This baptism in the river was so marked a feature in the ministry 
of John, that it gave him his distinctive title, The Baptist. It was a 
new and peculiar rite; of Divine appointment, as appears not only 
from the question which our Lord put to the Jewish rulers, " The 
baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men?" but also from the 
declaration of John himself, " He that sent me to baptize with 
water." It may have been suggested by, as it was in some respects 
similar to, the various ablutions or washings with water prescribed 
in the Mosaic ritual ; yet from all of these baptisms, if baptisms they 
could be called, it differed in many respects. They were all intended 
simply as instruments of purification from ceremonial defilement ; it 
had another character and object. With a few exceptional cases, 
they were all performed by the person's own hands, who went through 
the process of purification; it was performed by another, by the 
hands of John himself, or some of his disciples. They were repeated 
as often as the defilement was renewed; it was administered only 
nice. There was indeed one Jewish custom which, if then in use, 
presents a clear analogy to the baptism of John. When proselytes 
from heathenism were admitted into the pale of the Jewish common- 
wealth, after circumcision they were baptized. "They bring the 



74 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

proselyte," says an old Jewish authority,* "to baptism, and being 
placed in the water, they again instruct him in some weightier and 
in some lighter commands of the law, which being heard, he plunges 
himself and comes up, and behold he is an Israelite in all things." 
It would look as if the baptism of John was borrowed from this 
proselyte baptism of the Jews ; but though it were, it will at once 
appear to you that the former rite had marked peculiarities of its 
own. And as it stood thus distinguished from all Jewish, so also did 
it stand distinguished from the Christian rite ordained by our Lord 
himself, which involved a fuller faith, symbolized a higher privilege, 
and was always administered in the name of Christ. The one rite 
might be regarded indeed as running into and being superseded by 
the other, but of the great difference between them we have proof in 
the fact that those who had received the baptism of John were never- 
theless re-baptized on their admission into the Christian church. f 
John's baptism, like every thing about his ministry, was imperfect, 
preparatory, temporary, and transient, involving simply a confession 
of unworthiness, and a faith in one to come, through whom the re- 
mission of sins was to be conveyed. 

The people who flocked around John readily submitted to his 
baptism, whether regarding it as altogether new, or the modified 
form of some of then- own old observances. The accompaniment of 
his teaching with the administration of such an ordinance may have 
helped to reconcile the Pharisees, who were such lovers of the ritual- 
istic, to a preaching which had little in itself to recommend it to them, 
as the absence on the other hand of all doctrinal instruction, ah 
references to the unseen world, to angels and spirits, and the resur- 
rection, may have helped to conciliate the prejudices of the Saddu- 
cees. At any rate, we learn that, borne along with the flowing tide, 
Pharisees and Sadducees did actually present themselves before 
John to claim baptism at his hands. His quick, keen, spiritual in- 
sight at once detected the veiled deceit that lay in their doing so, 
and in the very spirit which his great Master afterwards displayed, 
ho proceeded to denounce their hypocrisy, giving them indeed the 
very title which Jesus bestowed on them. John's whole ministry, 
his teaching and baptizing, if it meant any thing, meant this, that 
without an inward spiritual change, without penitence, without refor- 
mation, no Israelite was prepared to enter into that kingdom whose 
advent he announced. His preaching was the preaching of repent- 
ance, his baptism the baptism of repentance ; the one great lesson 
the whole involved, was that all Israel had become spiritually unfit 
° Maimonides. f See Acts 19. 



THE FORERUNNER. 75 

for welcoming the Messiah, and sharing the blessings of his reign. 
But here were some, the Pharisees and Sadducees who now stood be- 
fore him, of whom he knew, that so far from entertaining the least 
idea that they required to go through any such process, they regard- 
ed themselves as preeminently the very ones to whom from theii 
position in Israel this kingdom was at once to bring its blessings. 
Penetrating their secret thoughts, the Baptist said to them, " Think 
not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father," and 
therefore are, simply as his descendants, entitled to all the benefits 
of that kingdom which is to be set up in Judea ; " I say unto you, 
that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham ;" 
a dim, yet not uncertain preintimation of the spiritual character and 
wide extension of the new kingdom of God ; the possibility even of 
the outcast and down-trodden Gentiles being admitted into it. 

John's bold and honest treatment of the Pharisees and Sadducees 
only made him look the more prophet-like in the eyes of the common 
people. It encouraged them to ask, "What shall we do then ?" In a 
form of precept like to that which Christ frequently employed, John 
said to them, " He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that 
hath none. He that hath meat, let him do likewise." There is no 
better sign morally of a community than when such kindly links oi 
brotherly sympathy so bind together all classes, as that those who 
have are ever ready to help those who want ; as, on the other hand, 
there is no clearer proof of a community morally disorganized than 
the absence of this benevolent disposition. Judea was at this time, 
both as to its religious and political condition, thoroughly disorgan- 
ized ; and in inculcating in this direct and emphatic way the great 
duty of a universal charity, John was at once laying bare one of the 
sorest of existing evils, and pointing to the method of its cure. 

Then came to him the publicans also, those Jews who for gain's 
sake had farmed the taxes imposed by the Romans ; a class odious 
and despised, looked upon by their countrymen generally as traitors, 
who, by extortion, drew large profits out of the national degradation. 
They, too, get the answer exactly suited to them : " Exact no more 
than what is appointed to you." Then came to him soldiers, Jews 
we may believe who had enlisted under the Eoman standard, and 
who not satisfied with the soldier's common pay abused their power 
as the military police of the country, and by force, or threat of accu- 
sation before the higher authorities, sought to improve their condi- 
tion. They, too, got the answer suited to their case : "Do violence 
to no man: neither accuse any falsely, and be content with your 
wages." These are but a few stray specimens of the manner in 



76 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

which the Baptist dealt with those who came to him : one quite new, 
yet so much needed. What power must have been exerted over a 
people so long accustomed to the inculcation of a mere ceremonial 
pietism, by this thoroughly intrepid, downright, plain, practical, un- 
accommodating and uncompromising kind of teaching. The great 
secret of its success lay here : that unsupported by any confirming 
signs from heaven — in a certain sense not needing them — he incul- 
cated the duties of justice, truthfulness, forbearance, charity, by a 
direct appeal to the simple, naked sense of right and wrong that 
dwells in every human bosom. And the world has seldom seen a 
more striking proof of the power of conscience, and of the response 
which, when taken suddenly and before it has time to get warped 
and biased, conscience will give to all direct, sincere, and vigorous 
addresses to it, than when those multitudes from Judea and Jerusa- 
lem, and all the land, gathered round the Baptist on the banks of the 
Jordan. 

"What an animating spectacle must these banks have then exhib- 
ited; a spectacle which has ever since been annually renewed by the 
resort of thousands of pilgrims thither. Our last and best describe! 
of Palestine* brings it thus before our eyes : " No common spring or 
tank would meet the necessities of the multitudes. The Jordan now 
seemed to have met with its fit purpose. It was the one river of 
Palestine sacred in its recollections, abundant in its waters ; and yet 
at the same time the river not of cities but of the wilderness, the 
scene of the preaching of those who dwelt not in king's palaces, nor 
wore soft clothing. On the banks of the rushing stream the multi- 
tudes gathered ; the priests and scribes from Jerusalem, down the 
pass of Adummim ; the publicans from Jericho on the south, and the 
lake of Gennesareth on the north; the soldiers on their way from 
Damascus to Petra, through the Ghor, in the war with the Arab 
chief Hareth; the peasants from Galilee, with One from Nazareth, 
through the opening of the plain of Esdraelon. The tall reeds or 
canes in the jungle waved, shaken by the wind ; the pebbles of the 
bare clay hills lay around, to which the Baptist pointed as capable of 
being transformed into the children of Abraham ; at their feet rushed 
the refreshing stream of the never-failing river." 

This description, indeed, applies to a period in the narrative a 
little farther on than the one which is now immediately before us. 
The "One from Nazareth" may have left his village home, and been 
already on the way, but as yet he was buried in obscurity, deep 
hidden among the people. All the people were musing in their 

° Stanley. 



THE FORERUNNER. 77 

hearts whether John were not himself the Christ. He knew what 
was in their hearts; he knew how ready they were to hail him as 
their promised deliverer. No man of his degree has ever had a fairer 
opportunity of lifting himself to high repute upon the shoulders of an 
acclaiming multitude. Did the tempting thought for a moment flit 
across his mind that he should seize upon the occasion so presented ? 
If it did, he was in haste to expel the intruder, and prevent the mul- 
titude by at once proclaiming that he was not the great prophet they 
were ready to believe he was ; that another was at hand much greater 
than he, to whom he was not worthy to discharge the lowest and most 
menial office of a slave, the carrying of his sandal, the unloosing of 
his shoe-latchet. He, John, baptized with water unto repentance, an 
incomplete and altogether preparatory affair ; but the greater than he 
would baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire. 

Such was the prompt and decisive manner in which he disowned 
all high pretensions. And when, shortly afterwards, posterior to our 
Lord's baptism, of which they may have heard nothing, a deputation 
from Jerusalem came down to ask him, "Who art thou?" he met the 
question with the emphatic negative, "I am not the Christ." " Art thou 
Elias then?" they said. John knew that the men who put this query 
to him were caring only about his person, and careless about his 
office — in the true spirit of all religious formalists, wanting so much 
to know who the teacher was, and but little heeding what his teach- 
ing meant; he knew that their idea was that the heavens were to 
give back Elijah to the earth, and that he was to appear in person 
to announce and anoint the Messiah, and that many of them believed 
that besides Elias another of the old prophets was to arise from the 
dead, to dignify by his presence the great era of the Messiah's inau- 
guration. Answering their questions according to the meaning of the 
questioners when they said, "Art thou Elias?" he said, "I am not ;" 
when they asked him, "Art thou that prophet?" he answered, "No." 
And when still further they inquired, "Who art thou then, that we may 
give an answer to them that sent us?" he said, that he was but a 
voice and nothing more, "the voice of one crying in the wilderness, 
Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias." 
Pressing him still farther by the interrogation, why it was that he 
baptized if he were neither Christ, nor Elias, nor that prophet ; he 
speaks again of his own baptism as if it were too insignificant a 
matter for any question about his right to administer it being raised 
or answered, and of the greater than he already revealed to him 
by the sign from heaven: "I baptize with water, but there stand- 
eth one among you whom ye know not. He it is who coming after 



78 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

me is preferred before me, whose shoe-latchet I am not worthy to 
unloose. " 

It is this jDrompt acknowledgment of his own infinite inferiority 
to Christ, his thorough appreciation of the relative position in which 
he stood to Jesus, the readiness with which he undertook the honorable 
but humble task of being but his herald, the unimpeachable fidelity 
and unfaltering steadiness with which he fulfilled the special course 
marked out for him by God, and above all the entire and apparently 
unconscious self-abnegation which in doing so he displayed, that 
shine forth as the prominent features in the personal character of the 
Baptist. 

To these, particularly to the last, we shall have occasion hereafter 
to allude. Meanwhile, let us dwell a moment on the place and office 
which the ministry of John occupied midway between the old and the 
new economy. "The law and the prophets were until John." In 
him and with him they expired. He was a prophet, the only oue 
among them all whose coming and whose office were themselves of 
old the subject of prophecy, honored above them all by the nearness 
of his standing to Jesus, by his being the friend of the Bridegroom, 
to whom it was given to hear the Bridegroom's living voice. But he 
was more than a prophet. Of the greatest of his predecessors, of 
Moses, of Elijah, of Daniel, it was true that they filled but a limited 
space in the great dispensation with which they were connected; 
their days but a handbreath in the broad cycle of events with which 
their lives and labors were wrapped up, the individuality of each, if 
not lost among, yet linked with that of a multitude of compeers. 
But John presents himself alone. The prophet of the desert, the 
forerunner of the Lord, appears without a coadjutor, a whole distinct 
economy in himself. To announce Christ's advent, to break up the 
way before Him, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord, this 
was the specific object of that economy which began and ended in 
John's ministry. 

The kind, and amount of the service which the Baptist thus ren- 
dered, as well as the need of it, it is difficult for us now thoroughly 
to understand and appreciate. In what respect Christ would have 
been placed at a disadvantage had not John preceded him ; in what 
respects the Baptist did open up the way before the Lord ; in what 
respects John's ministry told upon the condition of the Jewish 
people, morally and spiritually, so as to make it different from what 
it otherwise would have been — so as to make the soil all the better 
prepared to receive the seed which the hand of the Divine sower 
scattered — it is not very easy for us to estimate. One thing is clear 



THE FORERUNNER. 79 

enough, that it was John's hand which struck the first bold stroke at 
the root of the strong national prejudice which narrowed and carnal- 
ized the expected kingdom of their Messiah. It is quite possible, 
that, as to the true nature and extent of the coming kingdom, John 
may have been as much in the dark as the twelve apostles were till 
the day of Pentecost. One thing, however, was revealed to him in 
clearest light, and it was upon his knowledge of this that he spoke 
with such authority and power, that whatever the future kingdom 
was to be, it should be one in which force and fraud, and selfishness 
and insincerity, and all sham piety, were to be denied a place ; for 
which those would stand best prepared who were readiest to confess 
and give up their sins, and to act justly and benevolently towards 
their fellow-men, humbly and sincerely towards their God. You 
have but the rudiments, indeed, of the true doctrine of repentance in 
the teaching of the Baptist — the Christian doctrine but in germ ; but 
it is not difficult to see in it the same great lesson broached as to the 
inner and spiritual qualifications required of all the members of the 
kingdom of Christ, which was afterwards, with so much greater depth 
and fulness, unfolded privately to Nicodemus at the very beginning 
of our Lord's ministry in Judea, when he said to him: "Except a 
man be born again, he cannot see, he cannot enter into the kingdom 
of God ;" and publicly to the multitudes on the hill-side of Galilee, 
when the Lord said to them:- "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for 
theirs is the kingdom of heaven." 

It would be quite wrong, it would indicate an ignorance of the 
peculiar service which the Baptist was called upon to render, were 
we to imagine that there must be a preparatory process of repentance 
and reformation gone through by each of us before we believe in 
Jesus, and by faith enter the kingdom. Our position is so different 
from that occupied by the multitude to whom John preached, that 
what was most suitable for them is not so suitable for us. 

And yet not without some broad and general lessons for the 
church, at all times and in all ages, was it ordered so that the gentle 
preacher of peace should be preceded by the stern preacher of re* 
pentance ; that John should be seen in the desert in advance of Jesus, 
in his appearance, his haunts, his habits, his words, his ordinance, 
proclaiming and symbolizing the duty and discipline of penitence. 
It was only thus, by the ministry of the one running into the ministry 
of the other, that the Christian life, in its acts of penitence, as well 
as in its acts of faith and love, could stand before us in vivid relief, 
embodied in a full-orbed and personal portraiture. Jesus had no sin 
of hi3 own to mourn over, no evil dispositions to subdue, no evi) 



80 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

habits to relinquish. In the person, character, and life of Jesus, the 
great and needful duty of mortifying the body of sin and death could 
receive no visible illustration. He could supply to us no model or 
exemplar here. Was it not then wisely ordered that moving before, 
and for a time beside him, there should be seen that severer figure of 
the Baptist, as if to tell us that the proud spirit that is in us must be 
bowed, and the mountain-heights of pride in us be laid low, and the 
crooked things be made straight, and the rough places plain, to make 
way for the coming in of the Prince of Peace, and the setting up of 
his kingdom in our hearts ; that we must go with the Baptist into the 
solitudes of the desert, as well as with the Saviour into the happy 
homes and villages of Galilee? Would you see, in its full, finished, 
and perfect form, the character and course of conduct, which, as fol- 
lowers of the Crucified, we are to aim at and to realize, go study it in 
the life of Jesus. But would you see it in its formation as well as in 
its finish, go study it in the life of the Baptist ; put the two together, 
John and Jesus, and the portraiture is complete. 



VIII. 

The Baptism.* 



We have no definite information as to the date of the commence- 
ment of John's ministry, or his own age at that time. As we know, 
however, that he was six months older than Jesus, as we are told that 
Jesus was about thirty years of age when he began his public minis- 
try, and as that was the age fixed in the Jewish law for the priests 
entering on the duties of their office, it seems reasonable to conclude 
that the ministry of John had already lasted six months when Jesus 
presented himself before the Baptist on the banks of the Jordan. This 
would allow full time for intelligence of a movement which so rapidly 
pervaded the entire population of the southern districts of the coun- 
try, penetrating Galilee, and reaching even to Nazareth. Moved by 
this intelligence, other Galileans of that district as well as Jesus may 
have followed the wake of the multitude, and directed their sieps to 
the place where John was baptizing. In these circumstances Christ's 
departure from his home may not have created the surprise which it 
otherwise would have done. When Mary saw her son, who had 
hitherto so quietly and exclusively devoted himself to their discharge, 
throw up all his household duties and depart; when she learned 

o Matt. 3 : 13-17 ; Mark 1: 9-11 ; Luke 3 : 21-23 , John 1 : 30-33. 



THE BAPTISM. 81 

whither it was that his footsteps were tending, and gathered, as she 
may have done, from the tidings which were then afloat, that it was 
none other than the son of her relative Elisabeth who was shaking 
the entire community of the south by his summons to repent, and his 
proclamation of the nearness of the kingdom, she could scarcely 
have let Jesus go, for the first time that he had ever so parted from 
her, without following him with many wistful, wondering anxieties 
and hopes. But she did not know that he now left that home m 
Nazareth never but for a few days to return to it. Had she known 
it, could she have let him go alone? It was alone, however, and 
externally undistinguished among the crowd, that Jesus stood before 
John, and craved baptism at his hands. Efe did this in the simplest, 
least ostentatious way, aUowing the great mass of the baptisms to be 
over, mingling with the people, and offering himself as one of the 
last to whom the rite was to be administered. "It came to pass," 
Luke tells us, that "when all the people were baptized," Jesus was 
baptized also. But his baptism did not go past as the others did. 
So soon as John's eye fell upon this new candidate for the ordinance, 
he saw in him one altogether different in person and character from 
any who had hitherto been baptized. He felt at once as if this 
administration of his baptism would be altogether out of place ; thai 
for Jesus to be baptized by him would be to invert ^he relationship 
in which he knew and felt that they stood to one another. By earnest 
speech or expressive gesture he intimated his unwillingness to comply 
with the request. The word which St. Matthew uses in telling us 
that John forbade him, is one indicative of a very strenuous refusal 
on his part. This refusal he accompanied with the words: "I hav© 
need to be baptized of thee ; and comest thou to me !" 

These wordSj you will particularly remark, were spoken at the 
commencement of their interview, before the baptism of our Lord, 
before that sign from heaven was given of which he had been fore- 
warned, and for which he was to wait before pronouncing of any 
individual that he was the greater One who was to come, who was to 
baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire. Till he saw the Spirit 
descending and remaining, John could not know certainly, and had 
no warrant authoritatively to say that this was He of whom he spake. 
From the Baptist saying twice afterwards, " I knew him not," it has 
been imagined that up to this meeting John had never seen Jesus, 
had no personal acquaintance with his relative the son of Mary ; and 
the distance at which they lived from one another, with the entire 
length of the land between them, the retired life of the One at Naza- 
reth, and the dwelling of the other in the desert, have been referred 

Life ofOulrt. fi 



82 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

to as explaining the absence of ail acquaintance and intercc tirse. 
That there could have been but little intercourse is clear ; that thej 
may nevei have seen each other till now is possible. But if so, how 
are we to explain John's meeting the proposal of Jesus with so instant 
and earnest a declaration, and saying to him, "I have need to be bap- 
tized of thee ; and comest thou to me !" Jesus must either before 
these words were spoken have told John who he was, and the Bap- 
tist must have known from ordinary sources what a sinless and holy 
life he had been leading for these thirty years at Nazareth, or 
this knowledge must have been supematurally communicated ; for 
knowledge of Jesus to this extent at least, that he was no fit subject 
for a baptism which was for sinners, was obviously implied in this 
address. 

Is it, however, so certain, or even so probable, that John and 
Jesus had never met till now ? Zacharias and Elisabeth had to instruct 
their son as to his earthly work, his heavenly calling, and in doing so 
must have told him of the visit of Mary and the birth of Jesus. He 
must have learned from them enough to direct his eye longingly and 
expectantly to his Galilean relative as no other than the Messiah, for 
whose coming he was to prepare the people. True, he retired early 
to the desert, which was his place of ordinary residence till, the time 
of his showing unto Israel, but did that imply that he never was at 
Jerusalem, never went up to the great yearly festivals? Jesus was 
once, at least, in Jerusalem in his youth, and may have been often 
there before his thirtieth year. So, too, may it have been with John, 
and if so, they must have met there, and become acquainted with one 
another. Much, however, as there may have been to lead John to 
the belief that Jesus was he that was to come after him. the lapse of 
those thirty years, during which the two had bee*i almost totally 
separated, and the absence of all sign or token of the Messiahship 
luring Christ's secluded life at Nazareth, may have led him to doubt. 
Sven after he had received his great commission he might continue 
.n the same state of uncertainty waiting, as he had been instructed, 
till the sign from heaven was given. Whatever John's inward sur- 
mises or convictions may have been, he must have felt that it became 
him neither to speak of them nor to act on them, till the promised 
and visible token of the Messiahship lighted on him whom he was 
then to hold forth to the people as the Lamb of God, who was to 
take away the sin of the world. Such we conceive to have been the 
state of John's mind and feelings towards Jesus when He presented 
himself before him for baptism. From previous acquaintance he may 
instantly have recognised him as the son of Mary, to whom his 



THE BAPTISM. 83 

thoughts and hopes had for so many years been pointing. He cer- 
tainly did at once recognise him as his superior, as one at least so 
much holier than himself that he shrunk from baptizing Him. But 
he did not certainly know him as the Christ the Son of God; did not 
so know him at least as to be entitled to point him out as such to the 
people. When, some weeks afterwards, he actually did so, he was 
at pains to tell those whom he addressed that it was not upon the 
ground of any previous personal knowledge, or individual connection, 
that he spake of him as he did. "I knew him not," he said; " but 
he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon 
whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, 
the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw, 
and bear record that this is the Son of God." 

We now know more of Jesus than perhaps John did when Christ 
stood before him to be baptized; we know that he was the Holy One 
of God, who had no sin of his own to confess, no pollution to wash 
away ; and we too, like John, may wonder that the sinless Son of God 
should have submitted to such a baptism as his, a baptism accompa- 
nied with the acknowledgment of sin and the profession of repentance, 
and which was the symbol of the removal of the polluting stains of 
guilt. But our Lord's words fall upon our ears as they did on those 
of John: "Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becometu us to fulfil all 
righteousness." Firmly yet gently, authoritatively yet courteously, 
clothing the command in the form of a request, he carries it over the 
reluctance and remonstrance of the Baptist. "Suffer it to be so 
now," for this once, so long as the present transient earthly relation- 
ship between us subsists. Suffer it, " for so it becometh us to fulfil 
all righteousness." It is not then as a violator, but as a fulfill er of 
the law that Jesus comes to be baptized; not as one who confesses 
the want of such a perfect righteousness as might be presented for 
acceptance to God, but as one prepared to meet every requirement 
of his Father, and to render to it an exact and complete obedience. 
Who could speak thus, as if it were such an easy, as well as such a 
becoming thing in him to fulfil all righteousness, but the onlv begot- 
ten of the Father — he who, in coming into this world, could say, " Lo, 
I come to do thy will, O God." 

And here in subjecting himself to the baptism of John, you have 
the first instance of Christ's acting in his public official character as 
the Messiah. He sieps forth at last from his long retirement, his 
deep seclusion at Nazareth, to appear how ? to do what ? To appear 
as an inferior before the Baptist, to ask a service at his hands, to 
enroll himself as one of his disciples; for this was the primary pur- 



84 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

pose of this ordinance. It was the initiatory rite by which repentant 
Israelites enrolled themselves as the hopeful expectants of the coming 
kingdom ; and He, the head of that kingdom, stoops to enroll himseli 
in this way among them. " By one spirit," says the apostle, " we are 
all baptized into one body ;" the ontward baptism the sign or symbol 
of our incorporation into that one body the church. In the same way 
the Lord himself enters into that body, honors the ordinance which 
God had sent John to administer, conforms even to that preparatory 
and temporary economy through which his infant church was called 
to pass, putting himself under the law, making himself in all things 
like unto his brethren. 

Still, however, the difficulty returns upon us as to what meaning 
such a rite as that of John's baptism could have in the case of Jesus ; 
sin he had none to confess, nor penitence to feel, nor reformation to 
effect, nor a faith in the One to come to cherish. Yet his baptism in 
the Jordan was not without meaning; nay, its singular significance 
reveals itself as we contemplate the sinlessness of his character. We 
rightly regard the baptism of Jesus as the first act of his public min- 
istry; and does he not present himself at the very outset in that 
peculiar character and office which he sustains throughout his medi- 
atorial work, identifying himself with his people as their representa- 
tive and their head ; taking on him their sins, numbering himself with 
transgressors — doing now, enduring afterwards what it became them 
as sinners to do, as sinners to suffer ? 

But let us now fix our eye on what happened immediately after 
the baptism of Christ. He came up straightway out of the water. 
He did not wait, as the Jews asked the proselyte to do, to listen to 
still further instruction out of the law; instruction likely to be the 
more deeply impressed by the time and circumstances under which 
it was given. He did not wait, as we are led from the very expres- 
sion employed here to believe that many of those did who received 
the baptism from John. In him there was no need for such delay or 
any such instruction. The law of his God, was it not written wholly, 
deeply, indelibly in his heart ? Straightway, therefore, he goes forth 
from under the Baptist's hands. John's wondering eye is on him as 
he ascends the river banks. There he throws himself into the atti- 
tude, engages in the exercise of prayer, and then it is, as with uplifted 
hands he gazes into the heavens, that he sees them opened above his 
head, the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him., 
and a voice from heaven saying to him, " Thou art my beloved Son, 
in whom I am well pleased." 

The requirements of the narrative, as given by St. Matthew, St 



THE BAPTISM. 85 

Mark, and St. Luke, do not involve us in the belief that the bystand- 
ers generally, if present in any numbers, saw these sights and heard 
that voice. Its being so distinctly specified by each of the evange- 
lists that it was He who saw and heard, would rather lead us to the 
inference that the sight and the hearing were confined to our Lord. 
J ohn, indeed, tells us that he saw the vision, and we may believe 
therefore that he also heard the voice, but beyond the two, who 
may have been standing apart and by themselves, it would not seem 
that the wonders of this incident were at the time revealed. Other 
instances of like manifestations had this feature attached to them, 
that they were revealed to those whose organs were opened and 
allowed to take them in, and were hidden from those around. Ste- 
phen saw the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the 
right hand of God. The clamorous crowd about him did not see as 
he did. Had the vision burst upon their eyes, it would have awed 
their tumultuous rage to rest. When Saul was struck down on his 
way to Damascus, his companions saw indeed a light and heard some 
sounds, but they neither saw the person of the Saviour nor distin- 
guished the words he spoke, though in one sense in a much fitter 
condition to do so than Saul was. It is said of the disciples on the 
day of Pentecost, that there appeared unto them tongues as of fire 
which rested on the head of each; it is not likely that these were 
seen by those who mocked. 

But be it as it may as to the other spectators and auditors, it is 
evident that these supernatural appearances gave to the baptism of 
Jesus a new character in the Baptist's eyes, as they should do in 
ours. In the descending dove, outward emblem of the descending 
Spirit, he not only saw the preappointed token that the greater than 
he, who was to baptize with the Holy Ghost, was before him, but in 
the whole incident he beheld the first great step in our Lord's publie 
and official life — the setting of him openly apart as the Lamb for the 
sacrifice 

As Jesus stepped forth after the baptism on the banks of the river, 
he stood severed from the past, connected with a new future ; Naza- 
reth, its quiet home, its happy days, its peaceful occupations, lay 
behind ; trials and toils and suffering and death lay before him. He 
would not have been the Son of man had he not felt the significance 
and solemnity of the hour; he would not have been the full partaker 
of our human nature had the weight of his new position, new duties, 
new trials not pressed heavily upon his heart. He turns, in the pine, 
true instinct of his sinless humanity to seek support and strength in 
God, to throw himself and all his future upon his Father in prayer. 



86 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

But who may tell us how he felt and what he prayed? what desires, 
what hopes, what solicitudes went up from the heart at least, if not 
from the lips, of this extraordinary suppliant! Never be-fore had the 
throne of the heavenly Grace been thus approached, and never 
before was such answer given. The prayer ascends direct from earth 
to heaven, and brings the immediate answer down. It is as he prays 
that the Spirit comes, bringing light and strength and comfort to the 
Saviour, sustaining him under that consciousness of his Sonship to 
God, which now fills, expands, exalts his weak humanity. And does 
not our great Head and Representative stand before us here a type 
and pattern of every true believer in the Lord, as to the duty, the 
privilege, the power of prayer ? Of him, and of him only of the sons 
of men, might it be said that he prayed without ceasing; that his life 
was one of constant and sustained communion with his Father; and 
yet you find him on all the great occasions of his life having recourse 
to separate, solitary, sometimes to prolonged acts of devotion. His 
baptism, his appointment of the twelve apostles, his escape from the 
attempt to make him a king, his transfiguration, his agony in the gar- 
den, his death upon the cross, were all hallowed by prayer. The first 
and the last acts of his ministry were acts of prayer. From the low- 
est depth, from the highest elevation of that ministry, he poured out 
his spirit in prayer. For his mission on earth, for all his heaviest 
trials, he prepared himself by prayer. And should we not prepare 
for our poor earthly service, and fortify ourselves against temptations 
and trials, by following that great example ? The heavens above are 
not shut up against us, the Spirit who descended like a dove has not 
taken wings and flown away for ever from this earth. There is a 
power by which these heavens can still be penetrated, which can still 
bring down upon us that gentle messenger of rest — the power that 
lies in simple, humble, earnest, continued believing prayer. 

The Holy Spirit, as he descended upon Jesus, was pleased to 
assume the form and gentle motion of a dove gliding down from the 
skies. He came not now as a rushing mighty wind. He sat not on 
Jesus as a cloven tongue of fire. It was right that when he came to 
do the work of quick and strong conviction necessary in converting 
the souls of men, to bestow those gifts by which the first missiona- 
ries of the cross should be qualified for prosecuting that work, the 
rush as of a whirlwind should sweep through the room in which the dis- 
eiples were assembled, and the cloven tongues of fire should come 
down and rest upon their heads. But the visitation of the Spirit to 
the Saviour was for an altogether different purpose, and it could not 
be more fitly represented than by the meek-eyed dove, the chosaa 



THE BAPTISM- 87 

symbol of gentlenses and affection. The eagle with its wing of power, 
its eye of fire, its beak of terror was the bird of Jove. The dove the 
bird of Jesus. To him the Spirit came not, as in dealing with the 
souls of men, to bring light out of darkness, order out of confusion, 
but to point out as the Saviour of the world the meek and the lowly, 
the gentle and the loving Jesus. 

But was no ulterior purpose served by the descent of the Spirit 
on this occasion ? "We touch a mystery here we cannot solve, and 
need not try to penetrate. The sinless humanity of Jesus was brought 
into intimate and everlasting union with the divine nature of the Son 
of God, doubly secured as we should say from sin, and fully qualified 
for all the Messianic service, and yet we are taught that that human.- 
ity was impregnated and fitted for its work by the indwelling of the 
Holy Spirit. He was born of the Holy Ghost. He was led by the 
Spirit into the wilderness. In the synagogue of Nazareth, where he 
had first opened his lips as a public teacher, there was given to him 
the book of the prophet Isaiah ; he read the words, " The Spirit of the 
Lord is upon me ;" and having read the passage out, he closed the 
book, and said, " This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." 
John testified of him saying: "He whom God hath sent speaketh 
the words of God, for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto 
him." Jesus said of himself: "If I cast out devils by the Spirit of 
God, then is the kingdom of God come unto you." " God anointed 
Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power." It was 
through the eternal Spirit that he offered himself without spot 
to God. Heb. 9 : 14. He was declared to be the Son of God with 
power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from 
the dead. Rom. 1:4. It was through the Holy Ghost that he gave 
commandments to the apostles whom he had chosen, until the day 
in which he was taken up. Acts 1:2. So it is that through every 
stage of his career the Spirit is with him, qualifying kim for every 
work, why or how he alone could tell us who could lift that veil which 
shrouds the innermost recesses of the Spirit of the incarnate Son 
of God. 

As the Spirit lighted upon Jesus, there came to him a voice from 
heaven. This voice was twice heard again ; on the Mount of Trans- 
figuration, and within the temple. It was the voice of the Father. 
No man, since the fall of our first parent, had ever heard that voice 
before, as no man has ever heard it since. The fall sealed the 
Father's lips in silence ; all divine communications afterwards with 
man were made through the Son. It was he who appeared and 
spate to the patriarchs; it was he who spake from the summit of 



88 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

Sinai, and was the giver of the law; but now for the first time 
the Father's lips are opened, the long-kept silence is broken, that 
this testimony of the Father to the Sonship of Jesus, this expression 
of his entire good pleasure with him as he enters upon his ministry, 
may be given. That testimony and expression of approval were 
repeated afterwards in the very same words at the transfiguration; 
the words indeed on that occasion were spoken not to, but of Jesus, 
and addressed to the disciples; and so with a latent reference per- 
haps to Moses and Elias, the Father said to them : " This is my 
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased : hear ye him." But at the 
baptism St. Mark and St. Luke agree in stating that the words were 
spoken not of, but directly to Christ himself. Primarily and emi- 
nently it may have been for Christ's own sake that the words were 
upon this occasion spoken ; and as we contemplate them in this light, 
we feel that no thought can fathom their import, nor gauge what 
fulness of joy and strength they may have carried into the bosom of 
our Lord. But here too there is a veil which we must not try to lift. 
Instead of thinking then what meaning or power this assurance of 
his Sonship, and of the Father's full complacency in him, may have 
had for Christ, let us take it as opening to our view the one and only 
way of our adoption and acceptance by the Father, even by our being 
so well pleased in all things with Christ, our having such simple, im- 
plicit faith in him, that the Father looking upon us as one with him, 
becomes also well pleased with us. 



IX. 

The Temptation.* 



Satan was suffered to succeed in his temptation of our first 
parents. His success may for the moment have seemed to him com- 
plete, secure ; for did not the sentence run, " In the day that thou 
eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die"? And did not that sentence 
come from One whose steadfast truthfulness — dispute it as he might 
in words with Eve — none knew better than himself? Having once 
then got man to sin, he might have fancied that he had broken fci 
ever the tie that bound earth to heaven, that he had armed againsi 
the first inhabitants of our globe the same resistless might, and the 
game unyielding justice, by which he and the partners of the first 

• Matthew 4 : 1-11 ; Mark 1 : 12, 13 ; Luke 4 : 1-13. 



THE TEMPTATION. 89 

revolt in heaven had been driven away into their dark and ignomini- 
ous prison-house. But if such a hope had place for a season in the 
tempter's breast, it must surely have given way when, summoned 
together with his victims into the divine presence, the Lord God 
said to him: "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and 
between thy seed and her seed ; it shall bruise thy head, and thou 
shalt bruise his heel." Obscure as these words may at the time have 
seemed, yet must they have taught Satan to know that his empire 
over this new-formed world was neither to be an undisputed nor an 
undivided one. An enmity of some kind between his seed and the 
woman's seed was to arise ; no mere temporary irritation and insub- 
ordination on the part of his new subjects, but an enmity which 
would prove fatal to himself and to his kingdom, the final advantage 
in the predicted warfare being all against him ; for while he was to 
bruise the heel of his enemy, that enemy was to bruise his head, to 
crush his power. 

It could not therefore have been with a sense of security free 
from uneasy anticipations, that from the days of the first Adam down 
to the birth of the second, the God of this world held his empire over 
our earth. His dominion was the dominion of sin and death, and his 
triumph might seem complete, none of all our race being found who 
could keep himself from sin; while every one that sinned had died. 
But were there no checks to the exercise of his power, nothing to 
inspire him with alarm? Had not Enoch and Elijah passed away 
kom the world without tasting death? And must it not have 
appeared to him an inscrutable mystery that so many human spirits 
escaped at death altogether from beneath his sway? There were 
those prophecies, besides, delivered in Judea, of which he could not 
be ignorant, getting clearer and clearer as they grew in number, 
speaking of the advent of a great deliverer of the race ; there were 
those Jewish ceremonies prefiguring some great evemt disastrous 
to his reign ; there was the whole history and government of that 
wonderful people, the seed of Israel, guided by another hand than 
his, and regulated with a hostile purpose. 

All this must have awakened dark forebodings within Satan's 
breast ; forebodings stirred into a heightened terror when one of the 
woman's seed at last appeared, who, for thirty years, with perfect 
ease, apparently without a struggle, resisted all the seductions by 
* r hich his brethren of mankind had been led into sin. The visit of 
Gabriel to Nazareth, the angelic salutations, the angels that appealed 
and the hymns that floated over the hills of Bethlehem, the adora- 
tion of the shepherds, the worship of the wise men, the prophecies 



90 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

of the temple — all these, let us believe, were known to the great adver- 
sary of our race ; but not one nor all of them together excited in him 
such wonder or alarm as this simple fact, that here at last was one 
who stood absolutely stainless in the midst of the world's manifold 
pollutions. So long, however, as Jesus lived quietly and obscurely 
it Nazareth he might be permitted to enjoy his solitary triumph 
undisturbed, but his baptism in the Jordan brings him out from his 
retreat. This voice from heaven, a voice that neither man nor devil 
had ever heard before, resounding through the opened skies, pro- 
claims Him to be more than a son of man — to be, in very deed, the 
Son of God. Who can this mysterious being be ? — an alien and an 
enemy, Satan has counted him from his youth. But his Sonship to 
God. What can that imply ; how is it to be manifested ? The time 
has come for putting him to extreme trial, and, if he may not be per- 
sonally overcome, for forcing him to disclose his character at the 
commencement of his career. 

The opportunity for making the attempt is given. " Then was 
Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the 
devil." It was not, we may believe, under any thing like compulsion, 
outward or inward, that Jesus acted when immediately after his 
baptism he retired to the desert. Between the promptings of the 
Spirit of God and the movements of Christ there ever must have 
been the most entire consent and harmony. Why, then, so instantly 
after his public inauguration to his earthly work, is there this volun- 
tary retirement of our Lord, this hiding of himself in lonely solitudes? 
Accepting here the statement of the Evangelist, that it was to furnish 
the prince of darkness with the fit opportunity of assaulting him, 
may we not believe that these forty days in the wilderness without 
food served some other ends besides — did for our Lord in his higher 
vocation what the forty days of fasting did for Moses and Elijah in 
their lesser prophetic office; that they were days of preparation, 
meditation, prayer — a brief season interposed between the peaceful 
private life of Nazareth, and the public troubled life on which he was 
about to enter, for the purpose of girding him up for the great task 
assigned to him — a season of such close, absorbing, elevating, spirit- 
ual exercises that the spirit triumphed over the body, and for a time 
felt not even the need of daily food? It was not till these forty days 
were over that he was a hungered, nor was it till hunger was felt 
that the tempter came in person to assault. The expressions used 
indeed by St. Mark and St. Luke appear to imply that the tempta- 
tion ran through all the forty days ; but if so, it must, in the first 
instance, h#ve been of an inward and purely spiritual character, such 




'Days of Preparation, Meditation, Prayer." 



THE TEMPTATION. 91 

as we can well conceive mingling with and shadowing those other 
exercises to which the days and nights of that long solitude md fast- 
ing were devoted. 

And yet, though the holy spirit of our Lord prompted him to fol- 
low with willing footstep the leadings of the Holy Ghost, his tnu 
humanity may well have shrunk from what awaited him in the desert 
He knew that he was there to come into close contact with, to meet 
in personal encounter the head of that kingdom he was commissioned 
to overthrow; and, even as in the garden human weakness sank 
tremblingly under the burden of immeasurable woe, so here it may 
have shrunk from such an interview and such a conflict, needing as 
it were to be urged by Divine compulsion, and thus authorizing the 
strong expression which St. Mark employs, "Immediately the Spirit 
driveth him into the wilderness." It may in fact have been no small 
part of that trial which ran through the forty days, that he had con- 
tinually before him the approach and the encounter with the prince 
of darkness. 

"Whatever that state of his spirit was which rendered him insensi- 
ble to the cravings of hunger, it terminates with the close of the forty 
days. The inward supports that had borne him up during that rapt 
ecstatic condition are removed. He sinks back into a natural condi- 
tion. The common bodily sensations begin to be experienced; a 
strong craving for food is felt. Now, then, is the moment for the 
tempter to make his first assault upon the Holy One, as weak, fam- 
ished, the hunger of his long fast gnawing at his heart, he wanders 
with the wild beasts as his sole companions over the frightful soli- 
tudes. Coming upon him abruptly, he says to Jesus, "If thou be the 
Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." The words 
of the recent baptismal scene at the Jordan are yet ringing in Satan's 
ears. He knows not what to make of them. He would fain believe 
them false ; or better still, he would fain prove them false by prevail- 
ing upon Christ himself to doubt their truth. For, for him to doubt 
his Father's word would be virtually to renounce, disprove his Son- 
ship. Even then, as by his artful insidious speech to the woman in 
the garden — "Yea, has God said, In the day thou eatest thou ahalt 
die ?" — he sought to insinuate a secret doubt of the divine truthful- 
ness and divine goodness, so here, into the bosom of Jesus in the 
wilderness, he seeks to infuse a kindred doubt. 

'If thou be really the Son of God, as I have so lately heard thee 
called— but canst thou be? can it be here, and thus, alone in these 
desert places, foodless, companionless, comfortless, for so many days, 
that God would leave or trust his Son? But if thou wilt not doubt 



92 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

that tliou art his Son, surely God could never mean or wish that his 
Son should continue in such a state as this ? If thou be truly what 
thou hast been called, then all power must be thine; whatsoever 
tJ lings the Father doeth, thou too must be able to do. Show, then, 
thy Sonship, exert thy power, relieve thyself from this pressing 
hunger; " command that these stones be made bread." ' The temp- 
tation is here twofold : to shake if possible Christ's confidence in Him 
who had brought him into such a condition of extreme need, and to 
induce him, under the influence of that distrust, to exert at once his 
own power to deliver himself, to work a miracle to provide himself 
with food. The temptation is at once repelled, not by any assertion 
of his Sonship, or of his abiding trust in God, in opposition to the 
insidious doubt suggested — for that doubt the Saviour never cherish- 
ed ; the shaft that carried this doubt in it, though artfully contrived 
and skilfully directed, glanced innocuous from the mind of that con- 
fiding Son, who was ever so well pleased with the Father, as the 
Father had declared himself to be with him. 

Nor was the temptation repelled by any such counter argument 
as that it was inadmissible to exert his Divine power merely for his 
own benefit; but by a simple quotation from the book of Deuteron- 
omy: "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every 
word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." Jesus waives thus 
all question about his being the Son of God, or how it behooved him in 
that character to act. He takes his place as a son of man, and lays his 
hand upon an incident in the history of the children of Israel, who, 
led out into the wilderness, and continuing as destitute of common 
food forty years as he had been for forty days, received in due time 
the manna provided for them by God, who said to them afterwards, 
by the lips of Moses : " The Lord thy God humbled thee, and suffered 
thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, that he might make thee 
know that man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that 
proceedeth out of the mouth of God." It was by the word of the 
Lord's creative power that for those hungry Israelites the manna was 
provided; that word went forth at the Lord's own time, and to meet 
his people's wants in the Lord's own way; and upon that word, that 
is, upon Him whose word it was, Jesus, when now like the Israelites 
a hungered in the wilderness, will rely. It is not necessary for him 
to turn stones into bread in order to sustain his life ; other kinds of 
food his Father, if he so pleased, could provide, and he will leave him 
to do as he pleases. From that entire dependence on his Father, to 
which in his present circumstances, and under that Father's guid- 
ance, he had been shut up, he had no desire to be relieved— would 



THE TEMPTATION. 93 

certainly do nothing prematurely to relieve himself, and least of all 
at Satan's bidding would use the higher, the divine faculty that was 
in him, as a mere instrument of self-gratification. It was in the same 
spirit of self-denial, that ever afterwards he acted. Those who taunt- 
ed him on the cross, by saying, " If thou be the Son of God, come 
down from the cross," knew not how exact an echo their speech at 
Calvary was of Satan's speech in the wilderness — how thoroughly 
they were proving their parentage, as being of their father the devil. 
But Jesus would do neither as Satan nor these his children bade him. 
His power divine was given him to execute the great office of our 
spiritual deliverer : his way to the execution of his office lay through 
trial, suffering and death, and he would not call that power in to save 
him from any part of the required endurance; neither from the hun- 
ger of the wilderness, nor from any of the far heavier loads he had 
afterwards to bear. 

Foiled in his first attempt, accepting but profiting by his defeat, 
the artful adversary at once reverses his method, and assaults the 
Saviour precisely on the other side. He has tried to shake Christ's 
trust in his Father; he has failed; that trust seems only to gather 
strength the more severely it is proved; he will work now upon 
that very trust, and try to press it into presumption. "Then the 
devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle 
of the temple, and saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast 
thyself down." ' I acknowledge that you have been right in the wil- 
derness, that you have acted as a true Son of the Father. You have 
given, in fact, no mean proof of your entire confidence in him as your 
Father, in standing there in the extremity of hunger, and virtually 
saying, 'I am here by the will of God, here he can and he will pro- 
vide, I leave all to him.' But come, I ask you now to make another 
and still more striking display of your dependence in all possible 
conjunctures on the Divine aid. Show me, and all those worship- 
pers in the court below, how far this faith of yours in your Father 
will carry you. Do now, what in the sight of all will prove you to be 
the very one the Jews are looking for. If thou be the Son of God, 
then, as we shall presume thou art, cast thyself down ; the God who 
sustained thy body without food in the wilderness, can surely sustain 
it as you fling yourself into the yielding air; the people who are long- 
ing to see some wonder done by their expected Messiah, will hail 
you as such at once, when they see you, instead of being dashed to 
pieces, floating down at their feet as gently as a dove, and alighting 
in the midst of them. Give to me and them this proof of the great- 
ness of your faith, the reality of your Sonship to God ; and if you 



94 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

want a warrant for the act in those Scriptures which you have already 
quoted, remember what is written in one of those ancient Psalms, a 
psalm that the wise men say relates to you: "He shall give his angels 
charge concerning thee, and in their hands shall they bear thee up, 
lost at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone:" ' 

As promptly as before the Lord replies: "It is written again, 
Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." Here again, there is no 
attempt at argument, no correction of the quotation w r hich the temp- 
ter had made, no reminding him that, in quoting, he had omitted one 
essential clause, "He shall keep thee in all thy ways," the ways of 
his appointment, not of thine own fashioning. The one Scripture is 
simply met by the other, and left to be interpreted thereby. " Thou 
shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." To trust was one thing, to 
tempt another. Jesus would rely to the very uttermost upon the 
Divine faithfulness, upon God's promised care and help ; but he 
would not put that faithfulness to a needless trial. If put by the 
devil in a position of difficulty and danger, he will cherish an un- 
bounded trust in God, and if extrication from that position be desir- 
able, and no other way of effecting it be left, he will even believe that 
God will miraculously interpose in his behalf. But he will not of his 
own accord, without any proper call or invitation, for no other pur- 
pose than to make an experiment of the Father's willingness to aid 
him, to make a show of the kind of heavenly protection he could 
claim ; he will not voluntarily place himself in such a position. He 
was here on the pinnacle of the temple, from that pinnacle there was 
another open, easy, safe method of descent ; why should he refuse to 
take it if he desired to descend; why fling himself into open space? 
If he did so unasked, unordered by God himself, what warrant could 
he have that the Divine power would be put forth to bear him up? 
God had indeed promised to bear him up, but he had not bidden him 
cast himself down, for no other purpose than to see whether he would 
be borne up or no ; to do what Satan wished him to do, would be to 
show not the strength of his faith, but the extent of his presumption. 
Thus once again by that sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of 
God, is the second thrust of the adversary turned aside. 

These first two temptations, while opposite in character, have yet 
much that is common to both. The preface to each of them is the 
same: "If thou be the Son of God," a preface obviously suggested 
by the recent testimony at the baptism. They have also the common 
object of probing to the bottom, and thus trying to ascertain, the 
powers and privileges which this Sonship to God conferred. There 
was curiosity as well as malice in the double effort to do so, and the 



THE T.EMPTATION. 95 

subtlety of their method lay in this, that they were so constructed that 
had Christ yielded to either, in the very disclosure of his Godhead 
there had been an abuse of its power. Had Jesus taken the devil's 
way of proving his strength, he would have taken the very way to 
have broken it. In those first two temptations, Satan had spoken 
nothing of himself, had revealed nothing of his purposes : but balked 
in them he now drops the mask, appears in his own person, and bold- 
ly claims homage from Christ : "Again, the devil taketh him up into an 
exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the 
world, and the glory of them ; and saith unto him, All these things will 
I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." Had it been upon 
the actual summit of the temple at Jerusalem that Jesus previously 
had been placed, and if so, how was his conveyance thither effected? 
was it upon the actual summit of some earthly mountain that the feet 
of our Saviour were now planted, and if so, how was it, how could it be 
that all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them were brought 
before his eye? We have no answer to give to these questions; we 
care not to speculate as to the outward mode in which each tempta- 
tion is managed. "We are willing to believe any thing as to the acces- 
sories of this narrative which leaves untouched its truthfulness as an 
historic record of an actual and personal encounter between the 
prince of darkness and the Prince of Light. That the gospel narra- 
tive is such a record, we undoubtingly believe, and are strengthened in 
our faith as we perceive not only the suitableness and the subtlety of 
each individual temptation, as addressed to the humanity of our 
Lord, assaulting it in the only quarters in which it lay open to as- 
sault ; but the comprehensiveness of the whole temptation, as exem- 
plifying those classes of temptations by which humanity at large, by 
which each of us, individually, is seduced from the path of true obe- 
dience unto God. The body, soul, and spirit of our Lord were each 
in turn invaded ; by the lust of the flesh, by the lust of the eyes, by 
the pride of life, it was attempted to draw him away from his alle- 
giance. The first temptation was built upon bodily appetite, the 
hunger of the long fast ; the second, upon the love of ostentation, the 
desire we all have to show to the uttermost in what favor we stand 
with God or men; the third, upon ambition, the love of earthly, out- 
ward power and glory. 

The third had, however, a special adaptation to Christ's personal 
character and position at the time, and this very adaptation lent to it 
peculiar strength, making it, as it was the last, so also the most 
insidious, the most alluring of the three. Jesus knew the ancient 
prophecies about a universal monarchy that was to be set up in the 



96 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

days of Messiah the prince. From the days of his childhood, when 
in the temple he had sat among the doctors, hearing them and asking 
them questions, the sacred volume which contained these prophecies 
had been in his hands. Who shall tell us with what interest, with 
what wonder, with what self- application these prophecies were pon- 
dered by him in the days of his youth, during which he grew in wis 
dom as he grew in years? Who shall tell us how soon or how fully 
he attained the sublime consciousness, that he was himself the Mes- 
siah of whom that volume spake? Whatever may have been his ear- 
lier experience, at the time at least when the attestation at his bap- 
tism was given, that consciousness filled and pervaded his spirit. But 
he fell not into the general delusion which, in its desire for a conquer- 
ing and victorious prince, lost sight of a suffering, dying Redeemer. 
He knew full well that the path marked out for him as the Saviour of 
mankind lay through profoundest sorrow, and would end in an ago- 
nizing death. How much of all this Satan knew, it would be pre- 
sumptuous to conjecture. This, however, we are assured that he 
knew — for he had heard and could quote the ancient prophecies 
which pointed to it — he knew about a monarchy that in the last days 
the God of heaven was to set up, which was to overturn his own, 
which was to embrace all the kingdoms of the world, and into which 
all the glory of these kingdoms was to be brought. And he may, we 
might almost say he must, have known beforehand of the toil and 
strife and hard endurance through which the throne of that mon- 
archy was to be reached by his great rival. 

And now that rival is before him, just entering upon his career. 
Upon that rival he will make a bold attempt. He will show him all 
these kingdoms that have been so long under his dominion as the 
god of this world. He will offer them all to him at once, without a 
single blow being struck, a single peril encountered, a single suffering 
endured. He will save him all that conflict which, if not doubtful in 
the issue, was to be so painful in its progress. He will lay down his 
sceptre, and suffer Jesus to take it up. In one great gift he will 
make over his whole right of empire over these kingdoms of the world 
to Christ, suffer him at once to enter upon possession of them, and 
clothe himseK with all their glory. This is his glittering bribe, and 
all he asks in return is that Jesus shall do him homage, as the supe- 
rior by whom the splendid fief was given, and under whom it is held. 

A bold and blasphemous attempt, for who gave kiin those king- 
doms thus to give away ? And how could he imagine that Jesus was 
open to a bribe, or would ever bow the knee to him ? Let us remem- 
ber, however, that we all judge others by ourselves ; that there are 



THE TEMPTATION. 97 

fcliose who think that every man has his price ; that, make the bribe 
but large enough, and any man may be bought. And at the head of 
such thinkers is Satan. He judged Jesus by himself. And even as 
through lust of government he, archangel though he was, had not 
hesitated to withdraw his worship from the Supreme, so may he have 
thought that, taken unawares, even the Son of God himself might 
have fallen before the dazzling temptation. Had he done ^o, Satan 
would indeed have triumphed ; for putting wholly out of the question 
fche violated relationship to the Father, Jesus would thus have re- 
nounced all the purely moral and religious purposes of his mission — 
would have ceased to be regarded as the author of a spiritual revolu- 
tion, and the founder of a spiritual kingdom, affecting myriads of 
human spirits from the begiuning to the end of time, and would 
thenceforth have taken up the character of a mere vulgar earthlv 
monarch. 

But Satan knew not with whom he had to do. The eye of Jes b 
may for a moment have been dazzled by the offer made, and this 
implied neither imperfection nor sin, but it refused to rest upon the 
seducing spectacle. It turned quickly and resolutely away. No 
sooner is the bribe offered than it is repelled. In haste, as if that 
magnificent panorama was not one on which even his pure eye should 
be suffered to repose ; as if this temptation were one which even he 
could not afford to dally with; in anger too at the base condition 
coupled with the bribe, and as if he who offered it could no longer be 
suffered to remain in his presence, he calls the devil by his name, and 
says : " Get thee hence, Satan ; for it is written, Thou shalt worship 
the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." Satan had want- 
ed Jesus to give him some proof of his divine power, and now he 
gets it; gets it as that command is given which he must instantly 
obey. At once all that glittering illusion that he had conjured up 
vanishes from the view. At once his hateful presence is withdrawn, 
the conflict is over, the victory is complete. Jesus stands once more 
alone in the wilderness, but he is not left alone. Angels come and 
minister unto him, gazing with wonder on that mysterious man who 
has entered into this solitary conflict with the head of the principali- 
ties and powers of darkness, and foiled him at every point. 

But how are we to look upon this mysterious passage in the life 
of Christ ? Are we to read the record of it as we would the story of 
a duel between two great chiefs, under neither of whom we shall ever 
have to serve, in the mode and tactics of whose warfare we have con- 
sequently but little interest ? The very reverse. He who appeared 
that day in the wilderness before Jesus, and by so many wily acta 

Ufe of Christ. 7 



98 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

strove to rob him of his integrity as a Son of the Father, goeth about 
still as the arch-enemy of our souls, seeking whom he may devour. 
His power over us is not weakened, though it failed on Christ. His 
malice against us is not lessened, though it was impotent when tried 
on him. The time, the person, the circumstances all bestowed an 
undoubted peculiarity upon these temptations of the wilderness, the 
temple, and the mountain-top. We may be very sure that by temp- 
tations the same in outward form no other human being shall ever be 
assailed. But setting aside all that was special in them, let us lay 
our hand on the radical and essential principle of each of these three 
temptations, that we may see whether each of us is not still person- 
ally exposed to it. 

In the first instance, Christ, when under the pressure of one oi 
the most urgent appetites of our nature, is tempted co use a powei 
that he got for other purposes, to minister to his own gratification 
He is tempted, in fact, to use unlawful means to procure food. Is 
that a rare temptation? Not to speak here of those poor unfortu- 
nates who, under a like pressure, are tempted to put forth then 
hands to what is not their own, what shall we say of the merchant 
whom, in the brightest season of his prosperity, some sore and unex- 
pected calamity overtakes ? Through some reckless speculation, he 
sees the gay vision of his hopes give way, and utter ruin stand before 
him but a few days off. The dismal picture of a family accustomed 
to wealth plunged into poverty already haunts his eye and rends his 
heart. But a short respite still is given. Those around him are 
ignorant how he stands, his credit still is good, confidence in him is 
still unbroken. He can use that credit, he can employ the facilities 
which that confidence still gives. He dishonorably does so; with 
stealthy hand he places a portion of his fortune beyond the reach of 
his future creditors to keep it for his family's use. That man meets 
and falls under the very same temptation with which our Lord and 
Master was assailed. Distrusting God, he uses the powers and 
opportunities given him, unrighteously and for selfish ends. He for- 
gets that man liveth not by bread alone, but by every word which 
proceedeth out of the mouth of God. 

Or what again shall we say of him who, fairly committed to the 
faith of Christ, and embarked in the great effort of overcoming all 
that is evil in his evil nature, plunges, with scarce a thought, into 
scenes and amid temptations such that it would need a miracle to 
bring him forth unscathed ? That man meets and falls under the 
very same temptation with which our Saviour was assailed, when the 
devil said, " Cast thyself down," and quoted the promise of Divine 



THE TEMPTATION. 99 

support. Many and most precious indeed are the promises of Divine 
protection and support given us in the word of God, but they are not 
for us to rest on if recklessly and needlessly we rush into danger, 
crossing any of the common laws of nature, or trampling the dictates 
of ordinary prudence and the lesson of universal experience beneath 
our feet. It is not faith, it is presumption which does so. 

It might seem that we could find no actual parallel to the last 
temptation of our Lord, but in truth it is the one of all the three that 
is most frequently presented. Thrones and kingdoms, and all their 
glory, are not held out to us, but the wealth and the distinctions, the 
honors and the pleasures of life — these in different forms, in different 
degrees ply with their solicitations all of us in every rank, from tl e 
highest to the lowest, tempting us away from God to worship an I 
serve the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever- 
more. A spectacle not so wide, less gorgeous in its coloring, but a i 
sensuous, as illusive as that presented to Jesus on the mountain top , 
the arch-deceiver spreads out before our eyes, whispering to our 
hearts, "All this will I give you;" all this money, all that ease, all 
that pleasure, all that rank, all that power; but in saying so he deals 
with us more treacherously than he dealt with Christ of old. With 
him he boldly and broadly laid it down as the condition of the grant, 
that Christ rhould fall down and worship him. He asks from us no 
bending of the knee, no act of outward worship ; all he asks is, that 
we believe his false promises, and turn away from God and Christ to 
give ourselves up to worldliness of heart and habit and pursuit. If 
we do so, he is indifferent how we now think or act toward himself 
personally, for this is one of the worst peculiarities of that kingdom 
of darkness over which he presides, that its ruler knows no bettei 
subjects than those who deny his very being and disown his rule. 

But if it be to the very same temptations as those which beset 
our divine Lord and Master, that we are still exposed, let us be grate- 
ful to him for teaching us how to overcome them. He used through- 
out a single weapon. He had the whole armory of heaven at his 
command; but he chose only one instrument of defence, the word, 
the written word, that sword of the Spirit. It w T as it that he so suc- 
cessfully employed. Why this exclusive use of an old weapon? He 
did not need to have recourse to it. A word of his own spoken would 
have had as much power as a written one quoted ; but then the les- 
son of his example had been lost to us — the evidence that he himself 
has left behind of the power over temptation that lies in the written 
word. Knowing, then, that you wrestle not with flesh and blood 
alone, but with angels, and principalities, and pow r ers, and with him 



100 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

the head of all, of whose devices it becomes you not to be ignorant, 
take unto you the whole armor of God, for all is needed; but remem- 
ber, of all the pieces of which that panoply is composed, the last that 
is put into the hand of the Christian soldier by the great Captain oi 
his salvation — put into his hand as the one that He himself, on the 
great occasion of his conflict with the devil, used — put into his hand 
as the most effective and the only one that serves at once for defence 
and for assault — is the sword of the Spirit, the word of God. By it 
all other parts of the armor are guarded. The helmet might be shat- 
tered on the brow, the shield wrenched from the arm, did it not pro- 
tect ; for hope and faith, that helmet and that shield, on what do they 
rest, but upon the word of the living God ? When the tempter comes 
then, and plies you with his manifold and strong solicitations, be 
ready to meet him, as Jesus met him in the wilderness, and you shall 
thus come to know how true is that saying of David : " By the words 
of thy lips I have kept me from the path of the destroyer." 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 100a 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 

The quiet assurance and absence of self-assertion with which 
Jesus enters upon his public work, joined with his wonderful exhibition 
of power and authority when occasion requires, are the points to be 
emphasized in this lesson. 

The first feature is seen in the way in which Jesus, after his tempta- 
tion, comes and mingles with the people where John is baptizing, 
making no outward effort to attract disciples, but moving calmly and 
naturally till John's testimony causes the first followers to come to 
him. In the same simple, homelike way he attends the marriage at 
Cana, as free from any high claims for himself as any of the other 
guests. 

The other feature is seen in his manifesting of his divine power 
and glory in changing the water into wine, his royal bounty made the 
more evident by the abundance of the supply, and again when by the 
majesty of his presence and action he drives the traders from the 
temple. 

In Christ's answer to his mother at the marriage at Cana, " Mine 
hour is not yet come," there is given one of the early disclosures of a 
feature that runs through all his ministry, until, near the close he 
exclaims, " Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son." Dr. Hanna 
says: " The perfect unbroken unity of design and action running 
throughout the whole proclaims a previous foresight, a premeditated, 
well-ordered plan " (p. 114). 



PART I. PREPARATION AND EARLY MINISTRY. 

Study 3. First Disciples and Manifested Power. 

(1) John bears witness to Jesus 1006-104 

a. Jesus returns to the scene of John's baptism 1006 

b. The Spirit has now identified Jesus to John 101 

c. John states that his Master stands among them 101 

d. He says, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the 

sin of the world," and bears record that Christ is "the 

Son of God " 101-104 

e. The next day he again says, "Behold the Lamb of God".. . . 104 

(2) Five men are attracted to Jesus, some being John's disciples.. . 104-110 

a. The first two are Andrew and John the Apostle 104-106 

b. Andrew next brings Peter 106 

c. Philip is won on the way to Galilee 106 



1006 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 



d. Philip brings Nathanael 107, 108 

e. Meaning of this opening work. ..,..-. 108-110 

(3) Christ's first miracle 110-121 

a. Marriage at Cana 110 

b. Perhaps in a family related to Jesus Ill 

c. The suggestion of Mary as to lack of wine 112, 113 

d. The reply of Jesus showing he must now be independent in 

action 113-117 

e. His first miracle of changing water into wine 117 

/. Its relations and teachings 118-121 

(4) Christ cleansing the temple 121-129 

a. Effect of the miracle at Cana 121 

b. Removal of Jesus and his family to Capernaum 121-123 

c. First Passover of Christ's ministry 123, 124 

d. He attends it at Jerusalem 123, 124 

e. He cleanses the temple 124-126 

/. Significance and spiritual lessons 126-129 



x. 

The First Disciples.* 

From the forty days in the desert, from the long fast, from the 
triple assault, from the great victory won, from the companionship of 
the ministering angels, Jesus returns to the banks of the Jordan, and 
mingles, unnoticed and unknown, among the disciples of the Baptist. 
On the day of his return, a deputation from the Sanhedrim in Jeru- 
salem arrives, to institute a formal and authoritative inquiry into the 
character and claims of the great preacher of repentance. John's 
answers to the questions put by these deputies are chiefly negative 
in their character. He is not the Christ; he is not Elijah risen from 
the dead; neither is he that prophet by whom, as they imagined, 
Elijah was to be accompanied; who he is he would not say, however 
pointedly interrogated. But what he is, he so far informs them as 
to quote and apply to himself the passage from the prophecies of 
Isaiah, which spake of a voice crying in the wilderness, "Prepare ye 
the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." Challenged as to his 
right to baptize, if he is not that Christ, nor Elias, nor that prophet, 
John can now speak as he had not been able to do previously. Hith- 
erto he had spoken indeterminately of one whom he knew not, the 
greater than he, who was to come after him; but now the sign from 

• John 1 : 28-^51. 



THE FIRST DISCIPLES. 10] 

heaven had been given, the Spirit had been seen descending and abi- 
ding on Jesus. From the clay of his baptism Jesus had withdrawn 
John knew not whither, but now he sees him in the crowd, and says: 
" I baptize with water: but there standeth one among you, whom ye 
know not; he it is, who, coming after me, is preferred before me, 
whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose." 

Having got so little to satisfy them as to who the Baptist was, it 
does not seem that the deputies from Jerusalem troubled themselves 
to make any inquiries as to who this other and greater than John 
was. Nor was it otherwise with the multitude. Though the words 
of the Baptist, so publicly spoken, were such as might well awaken 
curiosity, the day passed, and Jesus remained unknown, assuming, 
saying, doing nothing by which he could be recognized. That John 
needed to point him out in order to recognition confirms our belief, 
derived in the first instance directly from the narrative itself, that at 
me baptism none but John and Jesus heard the voice from heaven, or 
saw the descending dove. Had the bystanders seen and heard these, 
among the disciples of John there would have been some ready at 
once to recognize Jesus on his return from the desert. But it is not so. 
Jesus remains hidden, and will not with his own hand lift the veil — 
will not bear any witness of himself — leaves it to another to do so. 

But he must not continue thus unknown — that were to frustrate 
the very end of all John's ministry. The next day, therefore, as John 
sees Jesus coming to him, while yet he is some way off, he points to 
him, and says: "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the 
sin of the world ! This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man 
which is preferred before me ; for he was before me. And I knew him 
not: but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I 

come baptizing with water I saw the Spirit descending from 

heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew him not ■ 
but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me 
Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on 
him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I 
saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God." 

John's first public official testimony to Christ was, as it seems to 
me, particularly remarkable, as containing no reference whatever to 
that character or office in which the mass of the Jewish people might 
have been willing enough to recognize him, but confined to those two 
attributes of his person and work which they so resolutely rejected. 
There is no mention here of Jesus as Messiah, the Prince, the King 
of Israel. The record that John bears of him is, that he is the Son 
of God, the Lamb of God. He had lately heard the voice from 



102 THE LIFE OF CHEIST 

heaven saying : " Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well 
pleased." In giving him then this title, in calling him the Son of 
God, John was but reechoing, as it were, the testimony of the Father. 
Taught thus to use and to apply it, it may be fairly questioned wheth- 
er the Baptist in his first employment of it entered into the full sig- 
nificance of the term, as declarative of Christ's unity of nature with 
the Father. That in its highest, its only true sense indeed, it did 
carry with it such a meaning, and was understood to do so by those 
who knew best how to interpret it, appears in many a striking pas- 
sage of the life of Jesus, and most conspicuously of all, in his trial 
and condemnation before the Jewish Sanhedrim. It was a title whose 
assumption by Jesus involved, in the apprehension of those who 
regarded him but as a man, nothing short of blasphemy. Such is 
the title here given to him by the Baptist. Whether he fully under- 
stood it or not, we can trace its adoption and employment to an 
obvious and natural source. 

But that other title, the Lamb of God, and the description annexed 
ty it, " which taketh away the sin of the world," how came the Baptist 
to apply these to Christ, and what did he mean by doing so ? Here 
we cannot doubt that the same inner and divine teaching which 
taught him in a passage of Isaiah's prophecies to see himself, taught 
him in another to see the Saviour, and that it was from that passage 
in which the prophet speaks of the Messiah as the Lamb brought to 
the slaughter, as a sheep dumb before his shearers, that he bor- 
rowed the title now for the first time bestowed upon Jesus. From 
the same passage too he learned that the Anointed of the Lord was 
to be " wounded for our transgressions, to be bruised for our iniqui- 
ties, the chastisement of our peace was to be upon him, and with 
his stripes we are to be healed." Here in Jesus John sees the 
greater than himself whose way he was to prepare before him, but 
that way he sees to be one leading him to suffering and to death ; 
his perhaps the only Jewish eye at that moment opened to discern 
the truth that it was through this suffering and this death that the 
spiritual victories of the great King were to be achieved ; that it was 
upon them that his spiritual kingdom was to have its broad and deep 
foundations laid. John's baptism had hitherto been one of repent- 
ance for the remission of sins. This remission had been held out in 
prospect as the end to which repentance was to conduct; but all 
about its source, its fulness, its certainty had been obscure — obscuro 
perhaps to John's own eyes ; obscure at least in the manner of his 
speaking about it; but now he sees the Lamb of God, the suffering, 
dying Jesus, taking away by bearing it the sin of the world — not 



THE FIRST DISCIPLES W 

taking away by subduing it the sinfulness of the world; that John 
could not have meant, and Jesus has not done — but taking the world's 
sin away by taking it on himself, and expiring beneath its load, 
making the great atoning sacrifice, fulfilling all the types of the Jew- 
ish ceremonial, all that the paschal lamb, all that the lamb of the 
morning and evening sacrifice had been typifying. 

In the two declarations then of John, " This is the Son of God,'* 
" Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world," 
you have in a form as distinct, as short and compendious, as it is any- 
where else to be found — the gospel of the kingdom. The divine 
nature of the man Christ Jesus, the completeness and efficacy of the 
shedding of his blood, of the offering up of himself for the remission 
of sins, are they not here very simply and plainly set forth ? We are 
not asked to believe that the Baptist himself understood his own tes- 
timony to Christ, as with the light thrown upon it by the epistles, 
and especially in this instance, by the epistle to the Hebrews, we 
now understand it; but assuredly he understood so much of it as 
that he himself saw in Christ, and desired that others should see in 
him, the heaven-laid channel, opened up through his life and death, 
of that Divine mercy which covereth all the transgressions of every 
penitent believing soul. 

How interesting to hear this gospel of the grace of God preached 
30 early, so simply, so earnestly, so believingly by him whose office 
in all the earlier parts of his ministry was so purely moral, a call 
simply to repentance, to acts and deeds of justice, mercy, truth. But 
this was the issue to which all those preparatory instructions were to 
conduct. The law in the hands of John was to be a schoolmaster to 
guide at last to Christ; and when the time for that guidance came, 
was it not with a sensation of relief, a bounding throb of exulting 
satisfaction, that — conscious of how impotent in themselves all his 
efforts were to get men to repent and reform, while the pardon of 
their sins was anxiously toiled after in the midst of perplexity and 
doubt, instead of being gratefully and joyfully accepted as God's free 
gift in Christ — the Baptist proclaimed to all around, " Behold the 
Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. ' 

Nor was he discouraged that his announcement met with no 
response that day from the crowd around; that still his voice was as 
the voice of one crying in the wilderness. The many who waited on 
his ministry and partook of his baptism came from curiosity, acted 
on a passing impulse, hoped that some new and better stfiie of things 
socially and politically was to be ushered in by this strange child of 
the desert — and had no deeper wants to be supplied or spiritual 



104 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 

iotigings to be satisfied. Quite strange — if not unmeaning, yet unwel- 
come—to their ears, this new utterance of the Baptist. It was not 
after the Lamb of God, not after one who was to take away theii 
sins, that they were seeking. But there were others of a different 
mould, partakers of the spirit of Simeon and Anna, waiting for the 
consolation of Israel, for the coming of one to whom, whatever out- 
ward kingdom he was to set up, they mainly looked as their spiritual 
Lord and King, in the days of whose kingdom peace was to' enter 
troubled consciences, and there should be rest for wearied hearts. 
The eyes of these waiters for the morning saw the first streaks of 
dawn in the ministry of the Baptist, and some of them had already 
enrolled themselves as his disciples, attaching themselves perma- 
nently to his person. 

The next day after he had given his first testimony to Christ's 
iamblike and sacrificial character and office — a testimony apparently 
so little heeded, attended at least with no outward and visible result — 
John is standing with two of these disciples by his side. He will 
repeat to them the testimony of yesterday ; they had heard it already, 
but he will try whether it will not have another and more powerful 
effect when given not promiscuously to a general audience, but spe- 
cifically to these two. Looking upon Jesus as he walked, he directed 
their attention to him by simply saying once again, "Behold the 
Lamb of God !" — leaving it to then memory to supply all about hhn 
which in the course of the two preceding days he had declared. Not 
now without effect. Neither of these two men may know as yet in 
what sense he is the Lamb of God, nor how by him their sin is to be 
taken away ; but both have felt their need of some one willing and 
able to guide their agitated hearts to a secure haven of rest, and they 
hope to find in him thus pointed out the one they need. They fol- 
low him. John restrains them not; it is as he would wish. Wil- 
lingly, gladly he sees them part from him to follow this new Master. 
He knows that they are putting themselves under a better, higher 
guidance than any which he can give. But who are these two men ? 
One of them is Andrew, better known to us by his brotherhood to 
Simon. The other reveals himself by the very manner in which he 
draws the veil over his own name. He would not name himself, and 
by that very modesty which he displays he stands revealed. It is no 
other than that disciple whom Jesus loved; no other than the writer 
of this Gospel, upon whose memory those days of his first acquaint- 
ance with Jesus had fixed themselves in the exact succession of their 
incidents so indelibly, that though he writes his narrative at least 
forty years after the death of Christ, he writes not only as an eye- 



THE FIEST DISCIPLES. 105 

witness, but as one who can tell day after day what happened ; and 
uo doubt the day was memorable to him, and the very hour of that 
day, on which he left the Baptist's side to join himself to Jesus. 

John and Andrew follow Jesus. We wonder which of the two it 
was that made the first movement towards him. Let us believe it to 
have been John, that we may cherish the thought that he was the 
first to follow as he was the last to leave. He was one at least of 
the first two men who became followers of the Lamb; and that 
because of their having heard him described as the Lamb of God. 
When this first incident in his own connection with Jesus is consid- 
ered, need we wonder that this epithet, "the Lamb," became so 
favorite a one with John ; that it is in his writings, and in them alone 
of all the writings of the New Testament, that it is to be found, 
occurring nearly thirty times in the book of the Apocalypse. 

The two disciples follow Jesus silently, respectfully, admiringly — 
anxious to address him, yet unwilling to obtrude. He relieves them 
from their embarrassment. The instinct of that love which is already 
drawing them to him tells him that he is being followed for the first 
time by human footsteps, answering to warm-beating, anxious human 
hearts. He turns and says to them, "What seek ye?" A vague 
and general question, which left it open to them to give any answer 
that they pleased, to connect their movement with him or not. But 
their true hearts speak out. It is not any short and hurried con- 
verse by the way that will satisfy their ardent longings. They would 
have hours with him, days with him alone in the seclusion of his 
home. "Eabbi" — they say to him, the first time doubtless that 
Jesus was ever so addressed — "where dwellest thou? He saith to 
them, Come and see ; and they came and saw where he dwelt, and 
abode with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour." If, in 
his gospel, John numbers the hours of the day according to the Jew- 
ish method of computation, then it must have been late in the after- 
noon, at four o'clock, having but two hours of that day to run, that 
Christ's invitation was given and accepted. We incline to believe, 
however, that John follows not the Jewish, but the Roman method 
of counting; and if so, then it was in the forenoon, at ten o'clock, 
that the two disciples accompanied our Lord. And Ave are the rather 
induced to believe so, as it gives room for the other incident, the 
bringing of Simon to Jesus, to happen during the same day; which, 
from the specific and journal -like character of this part of John's 
narrative, we can scarcely help conceiving that he did. 

But where and whose was the abode to which Jesus conducted 
John and Andrew, and how were their hours employed ? It could 



106 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

only have been some "house which the hospitality of strangers had 
opened for a few days' residence to one whom they knew not, and 
over all the intercourse that took place beneath its roof the veil is 
drawn. It is the earliest instance this of that studied reserve as to 
all the minuter details of Christ's daily life and conversation upon 
»vhich we may have afterwards to offer some remarks. John has 
not yet learned to lay his head on that Master's bosom, but already 
he is sitting at his feet. And there for all day long, and on into the 
quiet watches of the night, would he sit drinking in our Lord's first 
opening of his great message of mercy from the Father. Andrew 
has something of the restless, active spirit of his brother in him, and 
so no sooner has he himself attained a sure conviction that this is 
indeed the Christ whom he has found, than he hurries out to seek 
his own brother Simon and bring him to Jesus. We should have 
liked exceedingly to have been present at that interview, to have 
stood by as Jesus for the first time looked at Simon, and Simon 
for the first time fixed his eyes on Jesus. The Lord looks upon 
Simon and sees all he is and all that he is yet to be. His great con- 
fession, his three denials, his bitter repentance, his restoration, the 
great services rendered, the death like that of his Master he is to die, 
all are present to the thoughts of Jesus as he looks. " Thou art 
Simon," he says at once to him, as if he had known him from hie 
youth — "Simon, the son of Jona." This word Jona, in Hebrew, 
means a dove, and it has been thought, fancifully perhaps, that it 
was with a sidelong reference to the place of the dove's usual resort 
that Jesus said : " Thou art Simon the son of the dove, which seeks 
shelter in the rock ; thou shalt be called Cephas, shalt be the rock for 
the dove to shelter in." On an after occasion Jesus explained more 
fully why it was that this new name of Peter, the Rock, was bestowed. 
Here we have nothing but the simple fact before us, that it was at 
the first meeting of the two, and before any converse whatever took 
place between them, that the change of name was announced ; with 
what effect on Peter we are left to guess — his very silence, a silence 
rather strange to him, the only thing to tell us how deep was the 
impression made by this first interview with Christ. 

The next day, the fifth from that on which this chronicling of the 
days begins, Jesus goes forth on his return to Galilee, finds Philip 
by the way, and saith to him, " Follow me !" Philip was of" Beth- 
aaida. Bethsaida lay at the northern extremity of the sea of Galilee, 
not on the line of Christ's route from Bethabara to Nazareth or Cana. 
We infer from this circumstance that, like John, Andrew, and Peter, 
Philip had left his home to attend on the ministry of the Baptist 



THE FIRST DISCIPLES. 10/ 

On the banks of the Jordan, or afterwards from one or other of his 
Galilean countrymen who had already joined themselves to Christ, 
he had learned the particulars of his earlier earthly history. Any 
difficulty that he might himself have had in recognizing the Messiah- 
ship of one so born and educated was soon got over, the wonder at 
last enhancing the faith. Finding Nathanael, Philip said to him: 
" We have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets 
did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." It was a very nat- 
ural reply for one who lived so near to Nazareth, and knew how insig- 
nificant a place it was, to say : " Can there any good thing " — any such 
good thing — "come out of Nazareth?" " Come and see!" was Phil- 
ip's answer. It, proved the very simplicity and docility of Nathan- 
ael's nature, that he did at once go to see. Perhaps, however, his 
recent exercises had prepared him for the movement. Before Philip 
called him, he had been under the fig-tree, the chosen place for med- 
itation and prayer with the devout of Israel. There had he been 
pondering in his heart, wondering when the Hope of Israel was to 
come, and praying that it might be soon, when a friend comes and 
tells him that the very one he has been praying for has appeared. 
With willing spirit he accompanies his friend. Before, however, ho 
gets close to him, Jesus says, " Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom 
is no guile !" How much of that very guileless spirit which we have 
learned to call by his name is there in Nathanael's answer ! Without 
thinking that he is in fact accepting Christ's description of him as 
true, and so exposing himself to the charge of no small amount of 
arrogance, disproving in fact that charge by the very blindness that 
he shows to the expression of it, he says : " Whence knowest thou 
me ?" Our Lord's reply, " Before that Philip called theo, when thou 
wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee," we may regard as carrying more 
with it to the conscience and heart of Nathanael than the mere proof 
that Christ's eye saw what no human eye, placed as he was at the 
time, could have seen, but that the secrets of all hearts lay open to 
Him with whom he had now to do. Nathanael comes with doubting 
mind, but a guileless heart; and so now, without dealing with it intel- 
lectually, the doubt is scattered by our Lord's quick glance penetra- 
ting into his inner spirit, and an instant and sure faith is at once 
planted in Nathanael's breast. 

I am apt to think from the very form of Nathanael's answer, from 
the occurrence in it of a phrase that does not seem to have been ft 
Jewish synonym for the Messiah, that Nathanael too had been at the 
Jordan, and had heard there the testimony that John had borne to 
Jesus. 'Rabbi,' he says, 'thou art what I have lately heaid thee 



108 THE LITE OE CHRIST. 

Balled, and wondered at their calling thee ;" Thou art the Son of God. 

thou art the ting of Israel.'" ' There was something so fresh, sc 
fervent; so full-hearted in the words, they fell so pleasantly on the 
ear of Jesus, that a bright vision rose before his eye of the richer 
tilings that were yet in store for all that believed on him. First, he 
?ays to Nathanael individually, "Because I said unto thee. I saw thee 
under the fig-tree, believest thou ? thou shalt see greater things than 
these;" and then looking on the others, while still addressing him- 
self to him, he adds : " Verily, verily I say unto you. hereafter, or 
rather from this time forward, ye shall see heaven open, and the 
angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man. Tou 
liave heard, that a few weeks ago. on the banks of the river, the 
heavens opened for a moment above my head, and the Spirit was 
seen coming down like a dove upon me. That was but a sign. 
Believe what that sign was meant to confirm ; believe in me as the 
Lamb of God, the Saviour of the world, the baptizer with the Holy 
Ghost, and your eye of faith shall be quickened, and you shall see 
those heavens standing continually open above my head — opened by 
me for you; and the angels of God — all beings and things that cany 
on the blessed ministry of reconciliation between earth and heaven, 
between the sonls of believers below and the heavenly Father above — 
going up and bringing blessings innumerable down, ascending and 
descending upon the Son of man. Son of God — my Father called 
me so at my baptism, the devil tempted me as such in the desert, the 
Baptist gave me that name at Bethabara, and thou, Xathanael, hast 
bestowed it on me now once again; but the name that I now like 
best, and shall oftenest call myself, is that of the Son of man; and 
vet i am both, and in being both, truly and eternally fulfil the dream 
of Bethel. It was but in a clreara that your father Jacob saw that 
ladder set up on earth, whose top reached to heaven, up and dovsn 
which the angels were ever moving. It shall be in no drearo of the 
night, but in the clearest vision of the day — in the hours when the 
things of the unseen world shall stand most truly and vividly re- 
vealed — you -huh see in me that ladder of all gracious communica- 
tion between earth and heaven, my humanity fixing firmly the one 
end of that ladder on earth, in my divinity the other end of that lad- 
der lost amid the splendors of the throne." 

At first sight the narrative of these five days after the temptation, 
which we have thus followed to its close, has but little to attract. It 
recounts what many might regard as the comparatively insignificant 
fact of the attachment of five men — all of them Galileans, none of 
them of any note or rank among the people — to Christ. But oi 



THE FIRST DISCIPLES. 109 

these five men, four afterwards became apostles; (all of them, indeed, 
if, as is believed by many of our best critics, Nathanael and Barthol- 
omew were the same person;) and two of them, Peter and John, are 
linked together in the everlasting remembrance of that church which 
they helped to found. Had the Baptist's ministry clone nothing more 
than prepare those five men for the reception of the Messiah, and 
hand them over so prepared to Jesus, to become the first apostles of 
the faith, it had not been in vain. These five men were the first dis- 
ciples of Jesus, and in the narrative of their becoming so we have 
the history of the infancy of the church of the living God, that great 
community of the saints, that growing and goodly company, swel] ing 
out to a multitude that no man can number, out of every kindred, 
and tongue, and people, and nation. If there be any interest in tra- 
cing the great river that bears at last on its broad bottom the vessels 
of many lands, to some little bubbling fountain up among the hills ; 
if there be any interest in tracing the great monarchy whose power 
overshadowed the earth, to the erection of a little organized commu- 
nity among the Sabine hills ; if the traveller regards with wonder the 
little gushing stream, or the historian the first weak beginnings of 
the Roman commonwealth ; then may the same emotion be permit- 
ted to the Christian as he reads the page that tells of the first foun- 
dations being laid of a spiritual kingdom, which is to outlive all the 
kingdoms of this earth, and abide in its glory for ever. 

Still another interest attaches to the narrative now before us. II 
tells us of the variety of agencies employed in bringing the first oi 
his disciples to Christ. Two of these five men acted on the prompt- 
ings of the Baptist, one of them on the direct call or summons of oui 
Lord himself ; one at the instance of a brother, one on the urgency 
of a friend. It would be foolish to take these cases of adherence to 
the Christian cause as typical or representative of the numbers brought 
respectively to Christ by the voice of the preacher, the word of Christ 
himself, and the agency of relative or acquaintance ; but we cannot 
go wrong in regarding this variety of agency within so narrow limits, 
as warranting all means and methods by which any can be won to 
a true faith in Christ. Whatever these means and methods may be, 
in order to be effectual they must finally resolve themselves into 
direct individual address. It was in this way the first Gxe disciples 
were gathered in. By John speaking to two, Jesus to one, Andrew 
to one, Philip to one. It is the same species of agency similarly 
employed which God has always most richly blessed ; the direct, ear- 
nest, loving appeal of one man to his acquaintance, relative, or friend. 
How many are there among us who have been engaged f< r years 



110 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

eithsr in supporting by our liberality, or aiding by our actual service 
3ne or other of those societies whose object is to spread Christianity, 
but who may seldom if ever have endeavored, by direct and personal 
address, to influence one human soul for its spiritual and eternal 
good ! Not till more of the spirit of Jesus and John, of Andrew and 
Philip, as exhibited in this passage, descend upon us, shall we rightly 
acquit ourselves of our duty as followers of the Lamb. 

But in my mind the chief interest of the passage lies in the con- 
duct of our Lord himself. Those five days were not only the birth- 
time of the church, they were the beginning of Christ's public minis- 
try, and how does that ministry open ? Silently, gently, unostenta- 
tiously ; no public appearances, no great works done, no new instru- 
mentality employed ; by taking two men to live with him for a day, 
by asking another to follow him, by dealing wisely and tenderly and 
encouragingly with two others who are brought to him — so enters 
the Lord upon the earthly task assigned to him. Would any one 
sitting down to devise a career for the Son of God descending upon 
our earth to work out the salvation of our race, have assigned such 
an opening to his ministry ? and yet could any thing have been more 
appropriate to him who came not to be ministered unto but to minis- 
ter, than this turning away from being ministered unto by the angels 
In the desert, to the rendering of those kindly and all-important ser- 
vices to John and Andrew and Peter and Philip and Nathanael ? 



XL 

The First Miracle.* 

"And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee." 
Looking back to the preceding narrative, you observe that from the 
time of the arrival at Bethabara of the deputation from Jerusalem 
sent to inquire into the Baptist's character and claims, an exact note 
of the time is kept in recording the incidents which followed. " The 
next day/' that is, the first after that of the appearance of the depu- 
tation, John sees Jesus coming unto him, and points him out as the 
"Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." "Again 
the next day after," standing in company with two of his disciples, 
John repeats the testimony, and the two disciples followed Jesus; 
one of them, Andrew, going and bringing his own brother Simon, 
the other John, sitting at his new Master's feet. " The day follow- 

* John 2 : 1-12. 



THE FIKST MIEACLE. Ill 

ing, : ' Jesus, setting out on his return to Galilee, findeth Philip. Phil* 
ip findeth Nathanael, and so, accompanied by these five, (Andrew, 
John, Peter, Philip, and Nathanael,) Jesus proceeds upon his way 
back to his home. Occurring in a narrative like this, where the reg- 
ular succession of events is so accurately chronicled, we naturally, 
in coming to the expression, "the third day," interpret it as meaning 
the third day after the one that had immediately before been spoken 
of, that is, the one of Christ's departure from the banks of the Jor- 
dan Two days' easy travel carries him and his new attendants to 
Nazareth ; but there is no one there to receive them. The mother of 
Jesus and his brethren are at Cana, a village lying a few miles farther 
to the north. Thither they follow him, and find that a marriage is 
being celebrated there, to the feast connected with which Jesus and 
his five disciples are invited. One of the five, Nathanael, belonged 
to Cana, and may have received the invitation on his own account 
as an acquaintance of the family in whose house the marriage feast 
was held. But the others were strangers, only known to that family 
as having accompanied Jesus for the last few days — their tie of dis- 
cipleship to him quite a recent one, and as yet scarcely recognized 
by others. That on his account alone, and in consequence of a con- 
nection with him of such a kind, they should have been at once asked 
to be present at an entertainment to which friends and relatives only 
were ordinarily invited, would seem to indicate some familiar bond 
between the family at Nazareth and the one in which this marriage 
occurs. The idea of some such relationship is supported by the free- 
dom which Mary appears to exercise, speaking to the servants not 
like a stranger, but as one familiar in the dwelling. Besides, if 
Simon, called the Canaanite, was called so because of his connection 
with the village of Cana, his father Alphseus or Cleophas, who was 
married to a sister of Christ's mother, may have resided there, and it 
may have been in his family that this marriage occurred. Could we 
but be sure of this — which certainly is probable, and which early tra- 
dition affirms — the circumstance that when Jesus seated himself at 
this marriage feast he sat down at a table around which mother, 
and brothers and sisters, and uncle and aunt, and cousins of his own 
now gathered, it would give a peculiarly domestic character to the 
scene, and tnrow a new charm and interest around the miracle which 
was wrought at it. At any rate, we may assume that it was in a fam- 
ily connected by some close ties, whether of acquaintance or relation- 
ship, with that of Jesus that the marriage feast was kept. 

"And whe*L they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith to him, 
They have no wine." The wine, provided only for the original 



H2 THE LIFE OF 0HB1ST. 

aumber of guests, began to fail. Mary, evidently watching with a 
kind and womanly interest the progress of the feast, and perhaps 
ascribing the threatened exigency to the unexpected arrival of her 
son and his companions, becomes doubly anxious to shield a family 
in which she took such an interest from the painful feeling of having 
failed in the duties of hospitality. But why did Mary, seeing what 
she did, and feeling as she did, go to Jesus and say to him, " They 
have no wine"? That she expected him in some way to interfere is 
evident ; but what ground had she to expect that he would do so in 
any such manner as he did? She had never seen him work a miracle 
before. She had no reason, from past experience, to believe that ho 
would or could make wine at will, or that by his word of power he 
would supply the deficiency. She had, however, been laying up in 
her heart, and for thirty years revolving all that had been told her at 
the beginning about her son. She had none at Nazareth but Joseph 
to speak to ; none but he who would have believed her had she 
spoken. Joseph now is dead, and she is left to nurse the swelling 
hope in her solitary breast. At last the period comes, when rumors 
of the great preacher of repentance who has appeared in the wilder- 
ness of Judea, and to whom the whole country is rushing, spread 
over Galilee. Her son hears them, and rises from his work, and bids 
her adieu ; the first time that he has parted from her since she had 
lost him in Jerusalem, now eighteen years ago. What can be his 
object in leaving her, his now widowed mother ? She learns — per- 
haps he himself tells her — that he goes with other Galileans who 
want to see and hear the new teacher, it may be to enroll themselves 
by baptism as his disciples. She asks about this new teacher. Can 
it be that she discovers him to be no other than the son of her rela- 
tive Elisabeth, whose birth was in so strange a manner linked with 
that of Jesus? If so, into what a tumult of expectation must she 
have been thrown. 

But whether knowing aught of this or not, now at last, after a two 
months' absence, her son rejoins her, strangely altered in his bear- 
ing; attended, too, by those who, young as he is, hail him as their 
Master and pay him all possible respect. She scarcely ventures to 
ask him what has happened in the interval of his absence ; but them 
she fully questions ; and as they tell her that John has publicly pro- 
claimed her son to be no other than He whose coming it was his 
great object to announce; had pointed to him as the Lamb of God, 
the Son of God, the Baptizer with the Holy Ghost ; as they tell that 
they had found in him the Messias, the Christ, of whom Moses in 
the law and the prophets did write, and that it was as such they were 



THE FIRST MIRACLE. 113 

now following him — to what a pitch of joyful expectation must she 
uave been raised. Now at last the day so long looked for has come. 
Men have begun to see in him, her son, the Hope of Israel. Soon all 
Israel shall hail him as their Messiah. Meanwhile he is here among 
friends and relatives; has willingly accepted the invitation given to 
join this marriage-feast ; has lost nothing, as it would seem, of all his 
early kindly feelings to those around him. What will he think, what 
will he do, if he be told that owing to his presence, and that of his 
disciples, a difficulty has arisen, and discredit is likely to be thrown 
upon this family, which has shown itself so ready to gratify him, by 
asking these strangers to share in the festivities of the occasion ? She 
thinks, perhaps, of the cruse of oil, of the barley-loaves of the old 
prophets. Surely if her son be that great Prophet that is to appear, 
he might do something to provide for this unforeseen emergency; to 
meet this want ; to keep the heart of this poor, perhaps, but generous 
household from being wounded. But what shall she ask him to do ? 
what shall she suggest ? She will leave that to himself. She knows 
how kind in heart, how wise in counsel he is, and believes now that 
his power is equal to his will. She modestly contents herself with 
simply directing his attention to the fact, and saying to him, " They 
have no wine." 

It is the very delicacy of this approach and address which renders 
so remarkable our Lord's reply, "Woman, what have I to do with 
fchee?" — exactly the same form of expression which, on more than 
one occasion, the demons, whom he was about to dispossess, address- 
ed to Jesus, when they said to him, "What have we to do with 
thee?" or, "What hast thou to do with us, Jesus, thou Son of God?" 
On their part such language implied a repudiation of his interference ; 
a denial of and a desire to resist his power and authority. And what 
can the same form of expression mean as addressed now by Jesus to 
his mother? Interpret it as we may; soften it to the uttermost so as 
to remove any thing like harshness ; still it is the language of resist- 
ance and reproof. There may have been some over-haste or impa- 
tience on Mary's part; some motherly vanity mingling with her de- 
sire to see her son exert his power, and reveal his character before 
these assembled guests, which required to be gently checked; but 
our Lord's main object in speaking to her as he did, was to teach 
Mary that the period of his subjection to her maternal authority had 
expired; that in the new character he had assumed, in Lhat new 
sphere of action upon which he had entered, it was not for her, upon 
the ground simply of her relationship to him, to dictate or suggest 
what he should do. There was some danger of her forgetting this ; 

Wf« of Christ. 8 



114 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

of lier cherishing and acting on the belief that he was still to be he* 
son, as he had been throughout those thirty by-past years. It was 
right, it was even kind, that at the very outset she should be guarded 
against this danger, and saved the disappointment she might have 
felt had the limits of her influence and authority been left vague and 
undefined. Jesus would, therefore, have her to know definitely, and 
from the beginning of his ministry, that mother though she was as to 
his humanity, this gave her no right to interfere with him as the Son 
of the Highest, the Saviour of mankind. Thus gently but firmly 
does he repel the bringing of her maternal relationship to bear upon 
his Messianic work; thus gently but firmly does he assert and vindi- 
cate his perfect independence, disengaging himself from this the 
closest of earthly ties, that he may stand free in all things to do only 
the will of his Father in heaven. This manner of his conduct to the 
mother whom he so tenderly loved, may be regarded as the first of 
those repeated rebukes which Jesus gave by anticipation to that idol- 
atrous reverence which has carried the human bond into the spiritual 
kingdom ; carried it even into the heavenly places ; exalting Mary as 
the queen of heaven ; seating the crowned mother on a throne some- 
times on a level with, sometimes above that occupied by her Son, 
teaching us to pray to her as an equal intercessor with Christ. 

"Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet 
come." With him no impatience, no undue haste, no hurrying pre- 
maturely into action. He has waited quietly those thirty years, 
without a single trial of that superhuman strength which lay in him, 
content to bide till the set time came. And now he waits, even as to 
the performance of his first miracle, till the right and foreseen hour for 
its performance has arrived. As to this act of his power, and as to 
every act of it ; as to this incident of his life, and as to every incident 
of it — he could tell when the hour had not come, and when it had. 
He who at this marriage-feast could say to Mary, "Mine hour is not 
yet come," could say to the Omniscient in the upper chamber at 
Jerusalem, "Father, the hour is come, glorify thy Son." Mapped 
out before his foreseeing eye in all its times, places, events, issues, 
lay the whole of his earthly life and ministry. The perfect unbroken 
unity of design and action running throughout the whole proclaims a 
previous foresight, a premeditated, well-ordered plan. It has not 
been so with any of those men who have played the greatest and 
most prominent parts on the stage of human history. Their own 
confessions, the story of their lives, their earlier compared with their 
later acts, all tell us how little they knew or thought beforehand of 
what they finally were to be and do. Instead of one fixed, uniform. 



THE FIRST MIRACLE. 115 

anchanging scheme and purpose running through and regulating 
the whole life, in all its lesser as well as its greater movements, 
there have been shiftings and changings of place to suit the shift- 
*jQg3 and the changes of circumstances. Surprisals here, disappoint- 
ments there; old instruments of action worn out and thrown away, 
new ones invented and employed; the life made up of a motley array 
of many-colored incidents, out of which have come issues never 
dreamed of at the beginning. Was it so with the life that Jesus lived 
on earth? Had he been a mere man, committing himself to a great 
work under the guidance of a sublime, yet purely human, and there- 
fore weak and blind impulse, had he seen only so far into the future 
as the unaided human eye could carry, how much was there in the 
earlier period of his ministry to have excited false hopes, how much 
in the latter to have produced despondency! Bu't the people came 
in multitudes around him, and you can trace no sign of extravagant 
expectation. The tide of popular favor ebbs away from him, and 
you see no token of his giving up his enterprise in despair. No 
wavering of purpose, no change of plan, no altering of his course to 
suit new and obviously unforeseen emergencies. There is progress : a 
steady advance onward to the final consummation of the cross and 
the burial, the resurrection and ascension ; but all is consistent, all is 
harmonious. The attempt has been lately made, with all the re- 
sources of scholarship and all the skill of genius, to detect a discrep- 
ancy of design and expectation between the opening and closing 
stages of our Saviour's earthly course. It has failed. I cannot help 
thinking that all candid and intelligent readers of that life as we 
have it in the gospels, whatever be their religious opinions or prepos- 
sessions, will acknowledge that M. Eenan's failure is patent and com- 
plete. If so, it leaves that life of Jesus Christ distinguished from all 
others by a fixed, preestablished, unvarying design.* 

* This feature in our Lord's character appears to have strongly impressed the 
mind of Napoleon I. , as appears from the following extracts : 

"In every other life than that of Christ, what imperfections, what inconsis- 
tencies ! Where is the character that no opposition is sufficient to overwhelm ? 
Where is the individual whose conduct is never modified by event or circum- 
stance, who never yields to the influences of the time, never accommodates him- 
self to manners of passions that he cannot prevail to alter ? 

"I defy you to cite another life like that of Christ, exempt from the least 
vacillation of this kind, untainted by any suoh blots or wavering purpose. From 
first to last he is the same ; always the same, majestic and simple, infinitely 
severe and infinitely gentle ; throughout a life that may be said to have been 
lived under the public eye, Jesus never gives occasion to find fault ; the pru- 
dence of his conduct compels our admiration by its union of i'oree ami gentle- 



116 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Oar Lord's answer to Mary was ill-fitted, we might imagine, to 
foster hope, postponing apparently to an indefinite period any inter- 
position on his part. And yet she tnrns instantly to the servants, 
and says to them: "Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it." However 
surprised or perplexed she may have been, she appeared as confident 
as ever that he would interpose. It may have been her strong and 
hopeful faith which, notwithstanding the discouraging reply, sus- 
tained her expectation; or there may have been something in the 
tone and manner of her son, something in the way he laid the empha- 
sis as he pronounced the words, "Mine hour is not yet come," which 
conveyed to her the impression that the hour was approaching, was 
near, a speedy compliance shining through the apparent refusal. 

ness. Alike in speech and action, Jesus is enlightened, consistent, and calm. 
Sublimity is said to be an attribute of divinity ; what name then shall we give tc 
him in whose character were united every attribute of the sublime ? 

"I know men ; and I tell you that Jesus is not a man. 

"In Lycurgus, Numa, Confucius, and Mahomet, I only see legislators who 
having attained to the first place in the state, have sought the best solution of 
the social problem ; I see nothing in them that reveals Divinity ; they themselves 
have not pitched their claims so high. 

'* It is evident that it is only posterity that has deified the world's first despots, 
heroes, the princes of the nations, and the founders of the earliest republics 
For my part, I see in the heathen gods and those great men, beings of the same 
nature with myself. Their intelligence, after all, differs from mine only in form. 
They burst upon the world, played a great part in their day, as I have done in 
mine. Nothing in them proclaims divinity : on the contrary, I see numerous 
resemblances between them and me, common weaknesses and errors. Their facul- 
ties are such as I myself possess ; there is no difference save in the use that we 
have made of them, in accordance with the different ends we had in view, our dif- 
ferent countries and the circumstances of our times, 

"It is not so with Christ. Every thing in him amazes me ; his spirit out- 
reaches mine, and his will confounds me. Comparison is impossible between 
him and any other being in the world. He is truly a being by himself : his 
ideas and his sentiments, the truth that he announces, his manner of convincing, 
are all beyond humanity and the natural order of things. 

"His birth, and the story of his life, the profoundness of his doctrine which 
overturns all difficulties, and is their most complete solution, his gospel, the sin- 
gularity of this mysterious being, his appearance, his enrpire, his progress through 
all centuries and kingdoms, all this is to me a prodigy, an unfathomable mystery, 
which-plunges me into a reverie from which there is no escape, a mystery which 
is ever within my view, a permanent mystery which I can neither deny nor 
explain. 

"I see nothing here of man. Near as I may approach, closely as I may ex- 
amine, all remains above my comprehension, great with a greatness that crushes 
me ; it is in vain that I reflect — all remains unaccountable. " Sentiments <P Nap> 
leon sur le Christianisme. par le Chevalier de Beauterne. 



THE FIRST MIRACLE. 117 

But why did she give that order to the servants, or how could she 
anticipate that it was through their instrumentality that the ap- 
proaching supply was to be conveyed? Without some hint being 
given, some word or look of Jesus pointing in that direction, she 
sould scarcely have conjectured beforehand what the mode of his 
iction was to be. 

Leaving the mystery which arises here unresolved, as being left 
without the key to open it, let us look at the simple, easy, unostenta- 
tious way in which the succeeding miracle was wrought. There 
stand — at the entrance, perhaps, of the dwelling — six water-pots 
of stone; Jesus saith to the servants, "Fill the water-pots with water." 
They did so, tilling them to the brim. Jesus saith, "Draw out now, 
and bear unto the governor of the feast." They do so ; it is not water, 
but choicest wine they bear ! The ruler of the feast at once detects it 
as better wine than they had previously been drinking, and addresses 
the bridegroom. The latter gives no reply, for he does not know 
whence or how this new supply of better wine has come. As little 
know the guests who partake of it; nor, perhaps, till the feast is over, 
and the servants tell what has been done, is it known by what a mir- 
acle of power the festivities of that social board have been sustained. 
What a veiling this of the hand and power of the operator ! Imagine 
only that Jesus had asked the servants, while the water was water 
still, to draw it out and fill each goblet; had asked each guest to lift 
up his cup and taste, and see what kind of liquid it contained ; and 
then, by a word of his power, had turned the crystal water into the 
ruddy wine ! With what gaping wonder would every one have then 
been filled! Instead of this, ordering it so that what came to the 
guests appeared to come through the ordinary channel, without word 
or touch, aught said or done, in obedience to an inward volition of 
the Lord, the water hidden in the vessels is changed instantaneously 
into wine. There was the same dignified ease and simplicity, the 
same absence of ostentation about all Christ's miracles, proper to 
him who used not a delegated, but an intrinsic power. 

Struck with the manner in which Christ met the domestic need 
acd protected the family character, we must not overlook the large- 
ness of the provision that he made. At the most moderate computa- 
tion, the six water-pots must have held far more than enough to meet 
the requirements of the marriage-feast; enough of wine for that 
household for many months to come. In the overflowing generosity 
of his kindness, he does so much more than Mary would have asked 
cr could have conceived. And still, to all who feel their need and 
come to him to have their spiritual wants supplied,, he does exceed- 



118 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

ingly abundantly above all that they ask and all that they can 
think. 

When the governor of the feast had tasted the new-made wine, 
he called the bridegroom and said to him, " Every man at the begin- 
ning doth set forth good wine ; and when men have well drunk, thee 
that which is worse; but thou hast kept the good wine until now." 
He knew not whence that better wine had come ; he knew not to whom 
it was they owed it ; he knew not that, in contrasting as he did the 
custom of keeping the best wine to the last with that commonly fol- 
lowed at marriage-feasts he was but showing forth, as in a figure, the 
way in which the spiritual Bridegroom acts to all those who are called 
to the marriage-supper of the Lamb. Not as the world giveth gives 
Jesus to his own. The world gives its best and richest first. At the 
board which it spreads the viands may not fail; nay, may even grow 
in number and improve in quality ; but soon they pall on the sated 
appetite, and the end of the world's feast is always worse and less 
enjoyable than the beginning. Who has found it so of the provisions 
of a Saviour's grace — of those quiet, soothing, satisfying pleasures 
that true faith in him imparts? The more of these that any one 
receives, the more he enjoys them. The appetite grows with the 
food it feeds upon ; the relish increases with the appetite ; better 
and better things are still provided, and of each new cup of pleasure 
put into our hands, turning to the heavenly Provider, we may say, 
" Thou hast kept the good wine even until now." 

This, the beginning of his miracles, did Jesus in Cana of Galilee. 
The miracle lay in the instantaneous transmutation of water into 
wine. And yet the water with which those water-pots were filled, 
and in which this change was wrought, might have been drawn from 
the well of a vineyard, and instead of being poured into these stone 
vessels, might have been poured out over the soil into which the 
vine-plants struck their roots, and by these roots might have been 
drawn up into the stem, and through the branches been distilled into 
the grapes, and out of the grapes been pressed into the vat, and in 
that vat have fermented into wine. And thus, by the many steps 
and secret processes of nature might that water without a miracle, as 
we say, have been converted into wine. But is each step or stage of 
that natural transmutation less wonderful? Does it show inferior 
wisdom? Is it done by a feebler power? Just as little can we 
explain the process as spread out into multiplied details in the groat 
laboratory of nature as when condensed into one single act. And 
just as much should we see the divine hand and power in the one as 
in the other. He who sees God in the one — the miracle, and net in 



THE FIRST MIRACLE. 119 

tlie other, the processes of nature — has not the right faith in God. 
If we did not believe that God was operating throughout, working 
everywhere, his will and power the spring and support of every move- 
ment in the material creation, we should not believe that he is oper- 
ating here or there, in this miracle or in that. It is because we 
believe in the universal agency of the living God that we are pre- 
pared to believe in that agency in any singular form that it occasion- 
ally may take. There is, indeed, a difference between a miracle and 
any of the ordinary operations of nature ; a difference not in the agent, 
not in the power, but simply in the manner in which the power and 
agency are employed. In the one, the hand of the great Operator 
works slowly, uniformly, doing the same things always in the same 
way; his footsteps follow each other so surely and so regularly that, 
by a delusion of the understanding, we come to think that the things 
that follow each other so uniformly are not only naturally but neces- 
sarily linked to one another — the one by some imagined inherent 
power drawing the other after it ; needing no power but their own to 
bind them together at the first, or keep them bound together after- 
wards. Wherever there is orderly succession — and it pervades the 
whole universe of material things — we can classify the different pro- 
cesses that go on, and so reach what we call the laws of nature, which, 
after all, are but expressions of the orderly manner in which certain 
results are brought about ; but to these laws, as if they were living 
things, and had a vital power and energy belonging to them, we come 
to attribute the actual accomplishment of the result. It happens 
thus that the works of his hands in the midst of which we live, and 
which, for his glory and our good, the great Creator and Sustainer 
makes to move on with such fixed and orderly, stately and beautiful 
array, instead of being a clear translucent medium through which we 
see him, become often as a thick obscuring veil, hiding him from our 
sight. Hence the use of miracles, that He who worketh all in all, 
and worketh thus, should sometimes break as it were this order, that 
through the rent we might see the hand which had been hidden 
behind that self-constructed veil. 

And yet when we speak thus of a miracle as a breaking-in upon 
the ordinary and established course of nature, let us not think of it 
as if it were discord thrust into a harmony ; something loose, irreg- 
ular, disjointed, coming in to mar the beautiful and orderly progres- 
sion. In that harmonious progression, the lower ever yields to the 
higher. The vital powers, for instance, in plants and animate, are 
ever modifying the mechanical powers, the laws of motion ; the will 
of man comes in, in still more striking manner, to do the same thing 



120 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

with all the powers and processes of nature. You do not say that 
such crossings and counteractions of lower by higher laws disturb 
the harmony of nature ; they help to constitute it. And we believe 
that just as falsely as you would say that the order of nature was 
broken, the law of gravitation was violated, when the sap ascends 
ui the stem of the tree, and is distributed upwards through its 
branches ; just as falsely is it said of the miracles of Christianity, that 
they break that order, or violate any of nature's laws; for did we but 
know enough of that spiritual kingdom for whose establishment and 
advancement they were wrought, we should perceive that here too 
there was law and order, and that what we now call miracles were 
but instances of the lower yielding to the higher; that the grand, 
unbroken harmony of the vast universe, material, mental, moral, 
spiritual, may be sustained and promoted. 

This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and man- 
ifested forth his glory. The glory that was thus revealed lay not so 
much in the forthputting of almighty power (for it is an inferior glory 
that the bare exercise of any power, though it be divine, displays) 
as in the manner in which the power is exercised, the ends it is put 
forth to accomplish. Power appears here as the handmaid and min- 
ister of loving kindness, and gathers thus a richer glory than its own 
around it. Never let us forget that the first act of our Lord's public 
life was to grace a marriage by his presence. By doing so, he has 
for ever consecrated that and every other human bond and relation- 
ship. And the first exercise of his almighty power was to minister 
to the enjoyment of a marriage-feast. He who would not in the 
extremity of hunger employ his power to procure food for himself, 
put it forth to increase the comforts of others. By doing so, he has 
for ever consecrated all the innocent enjoyments of life. It will not 
do to say that his example here is no pattern to us; that what was 
safe for him might be injurious to us ; for he not only accepted the 
invitation for himself, but took his disciples along with him to the 
main' age-feast. There is something peculiarly striking and instruc- 
tive in our Lord's coming so directly from consort with the austere 
ascetic preacher of the wilderness, and carrying along with him these 
first disciples, the majority of whom had been John's disciples before 
they were his, and seating them by his side at this festive board. 
Does it not teach what the genius and spirit of his religion is? That 
it affects not the desert; that it shuns not the fellowship of man; 
that it frowns not on social joys and pleasures; that it reioices as 
readily with those who rejoice as it weeps with those who weep; 
ready to be with us in our hours of gladness, as well as in our hours 



THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE. 121 

of grief. Let no table be spread to which He who graced the mar- 
riage-feast at Cana could not be invited; let no pleasure be indulged 
in which could not live in the light of his countenance. Let his pres- 
ence and blessing be with us and upon us wherever we go and how- 
ever we are engaged ; and is the way not open by which the miracle 
of Cana may, in spirit, be repeated daily still, and the water of every 
earthly enjoyment turned into the very wine of heaven ? 



XII. 

The Cleansing of the Temple.* 

The miracle at the marriage-feast drew a marked line of distinG 
tion between the divine Teacher and the austere Essenes, those ere 
mites who dwelt apart, shut up in a kind of monastic seclusion, and 
who renounced the use of wine, condemned marriage, and denounced 
all bodily indulgence as injurious to the purity of the spirit. By act- 
ing as he did at Cana, Jesus at the very outset of his career placed 
himself in direct opposition to the strictest class of pietists then exist- 
ing — in direct opposition to the spirit and practice of those in all 
ages who have sought, by withdrawal from the world and estrange- 
ment from all objects of sense, to cultivate communion with the 
unseen, to rise to a closer intercourse with and nearer resemblance to 
the Deity. 

One effect of this first display by Jesus of his supernatural power 
was a strengthening of the faith of the men who had recently attached 
themselves to him. "His disciples," it is said, "believed in him." 
They had believed before, but they believed more firmly now. The 
ground of their first faith had been the testimony of the Baptist. 
Then 1 faith had grown during the few days of private intercourse with 
Jesus which succeeded, and now by the manifestation of his power 
and glory it was still more strengthened. It was still, as later trial 
too clearly proved, weak and imperfect. But their minds and hearts 
were in such a condition that they lay open to the influence of addi- 
tional light as to their Master's character, additional evidence of his 
authority and power. But there were other spectators of the mira- 
cle upon whom it exerted no such happy influence. After the mar- 
riage-feast at Cana broke up, "Jesus and his mother, and his breth- 
ren, and his disciples went down to Capernaum." This is the first 
mention of those brethren of Christ who appear more than ouc<> in 

« Jolm 2 : 12-21 : Matt. 21 : 10-17. 



122 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

tlie subsequent history, always associated with Mary, as forming part 
of her family, carefully distinguished from the apostles and disciples 
of the Lord. They are represented on one occasion as going out 
after him, thinking he was beside himself; and when he was told that 
Mary and they stood at the outskirts of the crowd desiring to see 
aim, he exclaimed, " Who is my mother, and who are my brethren ? 
Whosoever shall do the will of my Father who is in heaven, the same 
is my brother, and sister, and mother." On another occasion, the 
Nazarenes referred to them when, astonished and offended, they said 
to one another, "Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother 
called Mary, and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and 
Judas ? And his sisters, are they not all with us ?" John tells us 
that at a still later period, in the beginning of the last year of our 
Lord's ministry, these relatives taunted him, "saying, If thou do 
these things, show thyself to the world; for neither did his brethren 
believe in him." Had we been reading these passages for the first 
time, we should scarcely have understood them otherwise than as 
referring to those who were related to Jesus as children of the same 
mother. This would of course imply that Mary had other children 
than Jesus, an idea to which from the earliest period there seems to 
have been the strongest repugnance. Besting upon the well-known 
usage which allowed the term brother and sister to be extended to 
more distant relationships, and upon the acknowledged difficulty 
which arises in connection with the names of our Lord's brothers as 
given by the evangelists, both the Greek and the Latin churches, 
though adopting different theories as to the exact nature of the rela- 
tionship, have indignantly repudiated the idea of Mary's having any 
but one child, and have regarded those spoken of as his brothers as 
being either his half-brothers, sons of Joseph by another marriage, 
or his cousins, the children of Mary's sister, the wife of Alphseus or 
Cleophas. It would be out of place here to enter upon the discus- 
sion of this difficult question. I can only say that, after weighing all 
the objections which have been adduced, I can see no sufficient rea- 
son for rejecting the first and most natural reading of the passages 
I have referred to, for not believing that they were brothers and sis- 
ters of Jesus, who grew up along with him in the household at Naza- 
reth. Perhaps our readiness to admit this may partly spring from 
our not sharing the impression that there is any thing in such a 
belief either derogatory to the character of Mary, or to the true dig- 
nity of her first-born Son. 

Whoever they were, and however related to him, these brethren 
of the Lord, his nearest relatives, who had all along been living, if 



THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE. 123 

not under the same roof, yet in close and intimate acquaintance with 
him, sat beside his disciples at that marriage-feast, and saw the won- 
der that was done, and they did not believe. As months rolled on, 
they saw and heard of still greater wonders wrought in the presence 
of multitudes. Residing with Mary at Capernaum, they lived in the 
very heart of that commotion which the teaching and acts of Jesus 
excited. Neither did they then believe. Their unbelief may have 
been in part sustained by Christ's having ceased to make their home 
his home, and chosen twelve strangers as his close and constant com- 
panions and friends. Nor did any of them believe in Jesus all through 
the three years of his ministry. But it is pleasing to note that, though 
so long and so stubbornly maintained, their unbelief did at last give 
way ; you see them in that upper room to which the apostles retired 
after witnessing the ascension: "And when they were come in, they 
went up into an upper room, where abode both Peter and James, 
and John and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Mat- 
thew, James the son of Alphseus, and Simon Zelotes, and Judas the 
brother of James. These all continued with one accord in prayer 
and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, 
and with his brethren." How many an apt remark on the peculiar 
barriers which the closer ties of domestic life often oppose to the 
influence of the one Christian member of a household, and on the 
peculiar encouragement which such a one has to persevere, might be 
grounded upon the fact that it was not till after his death that our 
Lord's own immediate relatives believed in him. 

When the marriage-feast at Cana was over, Jesus and his mother, 
and his brethren, and his disciples went down to Capernaum. Of 
this town we shall have more to say hereafter, when it became the 
chosen centre of our Lord's Galilean ministry. One advantage of 
the short visit that Jesus now paid to it was, that it put him on the 
route along which the already gathering bands of visitors from North- 
ern Galilee passed southwards to the capital. The Passover was at 
hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Hitherto, though some time 
had passed (two or three months perhaps, but there are no materials 
for exactly determining) since his baptism and the public proclama- 
tion of his Messiahship, Jesus had taken no public step, none imply- 
ing any assumption on his part of the office to which he had been 
designated. Of the few men who attended him, there was but one 
whom he had asked to follow him ; nor was it yet understood whether 
he and the rest were to accompany him for more than a few days. 
The miracle at Cana was rather of a private aud domestic than of a 
public character. Nothing that we know of was said or done by 



124 THE LIFE OF C HEIST. 

Jesus at Capernaum, or throughout the short visit to Galilee, to indi- 
cate his entrance on a public career. 

But now he is in Jerusalem, in the place where most appropri- 
ately the first revelation of himself in his new character is made. 
Let us acknowledge that it is not in the form in which we should 
have expected it; nor in that form in which any Jew of that age 
would ever have imagined that the Messiah would first show himself. 
We may be able, by meditating a little upon it, to see more of its 
suitableness than at first sight appears. But even a first glance 
reveals how utterly unlike it was to the popular Jewish conception of 
the advent of the Messiah. One of the first things our Lord does at 
Jerusalem is to go up into the temple. He passes through one of 
the gates of its surrounding walls. He enters into the large open 
area which on all sides encompasses the sacred edifice. "What a spec- 
tacle meets his eye ! There all round, attached to the walls, are lines 
of booths or shops in which money-changers are plying their usuri- 
ous trade. The centre space is crowded with oxen and with sheep 
exposed for sale, and between the buyers and the sellers all the tur- 
bulent traffic of a cattle-market is going on. It goes on within the 
outer enclosure, but close upon the inner courts of the holy place ; 
so close that the loud hum from the crowded court of the Gentiles 
must have been heard to their no small disturbance by the priests 
and worshippers within. How comes all this ? and who is responsi- 
ble for this desecration of the temple ? The origin of it in one sense 
was natural enough. At all the great festivals, but especially at the 
Passover, an almost inconceivable number of animals were offered up 
in sacrifice. Josephus tells us of more than two hundred thousand 
victims sacrificed in the course of a single Passover celebration. The 
greatest proportion of these were not brought up from the country 
by the offerers, but were purchased on their arrival at Jerusalem. 
An extensive traffic, yielding no inconsiderable gain to those engaged 
in it, was thus created. Some open area for conducting it was need- 
ed. The heads of the priesthood, to whom the custody- of the temple 
was committed, saw that good rents were got for any suitable mar- 
ket-ground which the city could supply. They were tempted to fill 
their own coffers from this source. Jerusalem could furnish no place 
so suitable for the exposure of the animals as the Court of the Gen- 
tiles. "What more convenient than that the victims should be pur- 
chased in the very neighborhood of the place where they were to be 
offered up ? The greed of gain prevailed over all care for the sanc- 
tity of the temple. The Court of the Gentiles was let out to the cat- 
tle-dealers, and a large amount was thus added to the yearly revenue 



THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE. 125 

of the temple. Still another source of gain lay open, and was taken 
advantage of. Every one who came up to the Passover, and desired 
to take part in the festival, had to present a half-shekel of Jewish 
money to the priests. This kind of money was not now in general 
use; it was scarce even in Judea, unknown beyond that land. Noth- 
ing, however, but the half-shekel of the sanctuary would be taken at 
the temple. To supply themselves with the needed coin, visitors had 
to go to the money-changer. And where can he find a fitter place 
to erect his booth and set out his table than within the very area in 
which the larger traffic was going on ? He offers so much to the 
priesthood to be permitted to do so; the bribe is taken, and the 
booth and the tables are erected. And so, amid a perfect Babel of 
tongues, and thronging, jostling crowds of men and beasts, the buy- 
ing and the selling and the money-changing are all going on. 

Into the heart of this tumultuous throng Jesus enters. Of the 
many hundreds there, few have ever seen him before; few know 
anything about him, either about his baptism in the Jordan or his 
late miracle at Cana. He appears as a stranger, a young man clad in 
the simple garb of a Galilean peasant, without any badge of author 
ity in his hand. He looks around with an eye of indignant sorrow, 
pours out the changers' money, overthrows their tables, forming a 
scourge of small cords drives the herds of cattle before him, and, 
mingling consideration with his zeal, says to them who sold the 
doves, " Take these things hence ; make not my Father's house a 
house of merchandise." Why is it that at the touch of this slender 
scourge, and the bidding of this youthful stranger, buyers and sellers 
stop their traffic, the money-changers suffer their money to be rudely 
handled and their tables to be overturned? The slightest resist- 
ance of so many against one would have been sufficient to arrest 
the movement. But no such resistance is attempted, no opposition 
is made, by men not likely from their occupation to be remarkable 
for mildness of disposition or pliability of character. How are we to 
explain this? "We can understand how, at the last Passover, at the 
close of his ministry, when Jesus, then so well known, so generally 
recognised by the people as a prophet, repeated this cleansing of the 
temple, there should have been a yielding to his authoritative com- 
mand. But what are we to say of such an occurrence taking place 
at the very commencement of his ministry, his first public act in 
Jerusalem ? It is a mysterious power which some men, in time of 
excitement, by look and word and tone of command, can exercise 
over their fellow-men. But grant that rare power in its highest 
degree to Jesus, it will scarce account for this scene in the court 



126 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

of the Gentiles at Jerusalem. It would seem as if, in eye and voice 
and action, the divine power and authority that lay in Jesus broke 
forth into visible manifestation, and laid suck a spell upon those 
rough cattle-drivers and those cold calculators of the money-tables, 
that all power of resistance was for the time subdued. It would 
seem as if it pleased him to exert here within the temple the same 
influence t>at he did afterwards in the garden, when he stepped forth 
from the darkness into the full moonlight, and said to the rough 
band that advanced with lanterns and swords and staves to take 
bim, " I that speak unto you am he ;" and when at the sight and 
word they reeled backward and fell to the ground. The effect in 
both cases was but temporary. High priests and officers were soon 
upon their feet again; and, wondering at their own weakness in 
yielding to a power which at the moment they were impotent to 
resist, proceeded to lay hold upon Jesus and lead him away unto 
Caiaphas. ' So was it also, we believe, in the temple court. A sud- 
den, mysterious, irresistible power is upon that crowd. They yield, 
they know not why. But by-and-by the spell would seem to be 
withdrawn. They soon recover from its effect. Nor is it long till, 
wondering at their having allowed a single man, and one who had 
no right whatever, to interfere with arrangements made by the chief 
authorities, and to lord it over them, they return, resume their occu- 
pations, and all goes on as before. 

It was with no intention or expectation of putting an end in this 
way to the desecration of the holy place that Jesus acted. What, 
then, was the purpose of his act? It was meant to be a public 
proclamation of his Sonship to God : an open assertion and exercise 
of his authority as sustaining this relation ; a protest in his Father's 
name against the conduct of the priesthood in permitting this dese- 
cration of the holy place. It was far more for the priesthood than 
for the crowd in the market-place that it was meant. They were 
not ignorant that the chief object of the ministry of the Baptist, with 
which the whole country was ringing, was to announce the imme- 
diate coming of the Messiah. They had not long before sent a depu- 
tation to the banks of the Jordan to ask John whether he himself 
were not the Messiah whose near advent he was foretelling. The 
members of that deputation heard of the baptism of Jesus ; in all 
likelihood they had not left the place when Jesus came back from 
the temptation in the wilderness, and was publicly pointed to by 
John as the greater than himself who was to come after him, the 
Lamb of God, the Son of God. From the lips of the men whom 
they had sent, or from the lips of others, they must have known all 



THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE. 127 

about what had happened. And now here among them is this Jesus 
of Nazareth ; here he is come up to the temple, speaking and acting 
as if it were his part and office authoritatively to interpose and 
cleanse the building of all its defilements. What else could the 
priesthood who had charge of the temple understand than that 
here was claimed a jurisdiction in regard to it superior to their 
own ? What else could they understand when the words were heard, 
or were repeated to them, " Make not my Father's house a house of 
merchandise," than that here was one who claimed a relationship to 
God as his Father, and a right over the temple as his Father's house, 
which none but One could claim ? They go to him, therefore, or they 
call him before them, and entering, you will remark, into no justifica- 
tion of their own deed in hiring out the temple court as they had 
done — entering into no argument with him as to the rightness or 
wrongness of what he had done, rather admitting that if he were 
indeed a prophet, as his acts showed that he at least pretended to 
be, his act was justifiable ; they proceed upon the assumption that 
he was bound to give to them some proof of his carrying a Divine 
commission, and they say to him, "What sign showest thou unto 
us, seeing thou doest these things ?" 

He had shown a good enough sign already, had they read it aright. 
He was about to show signs numerous and significant enough in the 
days that immediately succeeded; but to such a haughty challenge 
as this, coming, as he knew, from men whom no sign would convince 
of his Messiahship, he had but this reply: "Destroy this temple, and 
in three days I will raise it up." A truly dark saying; one that, not 
only they did not and could not at the time understand, but that they 
were almost certain to misunderstand, and, misunderstanding, to 
turn against the speaker, as if he meant to claim the possession of a 
power which he never could be called upon to exercise. Then said 
the Jews, interpreting, as they could scarce fail to do, his words as 
applicable to the material temple: " Forty-and-six years has this 
temple been in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three davs?"* 

Jesus made no attempt to rectify the error into which his ques- 

* It is curious that, in saying so, they have left So us one of the few fixed and 
certain data upon which we can determine the year when the public ministry of 
our Lord began. We know that the building, or rather rebuilding of the tem- 
ple, was commenced by Herod in the eighteenth year of his reign ; that is — speak- 
ing according to the Eoman method of counting their years, from the foundation 
of Rome — during the year that began in the spring of 731, and ended in that of 
735. Forty-six years from this would bring us to the year 7S0-781. Historical 
Btatements and astronomical calculations conspire to prove that it must have been 



128 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

tioners had fallen. He could not well have done so without a pro- 
mature disclosure of his death and resurrection, a thing that he care- 
fully avoided till the time of their accomplishment drew near. He 
left this mysterious saying to be interpreted against himself. Ii 
seems to have taken a deep hold, to have been widely circulated, 
and to have fixed itself very deeply in the memory of the people. 
Three years afterwards, when they were trying to convict him of 
some crime in reference to religion, this first saying of his was brought 
up against him, as one uttered blasphemously against the temple ; but 
the two witnesses could not agree about the words. And when the 
cross was raised, those who passed by railed on him, saying, "Ah, 
thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save 
thyself." Whatever differences there were in the remembrances and 
reports of the people, in one thing they agreed, in the attributing the 
destruction of the temple that Jesus had spoken of here, to himself. 
But he had not spoken of the destruction as effected by his own 
hands, but by those of the Jews themselves. And he had not had in 
his eye the material temple on Mount Moriah, but the temple of his 
body, which they were to destroy, and which he, three days after- 
wards, was to raise from the dead. AH 'this became plain afterwards, 
and went, when his real meaning stood revealed in the event, migh- 
tily to confirm the faith of his followers. And in one respect it may 
still go to confirm ours, for does not that saying of Jesus, uttered so 
early — his first word, we may say, to the leaders of the people at 
Jerusalem — does it not, along with so many other like evidences, go 
to prove how clearly the Lord saw the end from the beginning? 

The temple at Jerusalem has long been in ruins. In its stead 
there stands now before us the church of the body of Christ, the soci- 
ety of the faithful. In her corporate capacity, in her corporate act- 
ings, has the church not acted over again what the Jews did with 
their temple, when she has made merchandise of her offices and her 
revenues, and sold them to the highest bidder, as you would sell oxen 
in the market or meat in the shambles? The spirit which promptF 
such open sacrilegious acts, such gross making gain of godliness, is 
the self-same spirit which our Lord rebuked; and how often does it 
creep into and take hold and spread like a defiling leprosy over the 
house of God! It does so in the pulpit, whenever self, in one or 
other of its insidious forms, frames the speech and animates the 

between the 13th March and the 4th April, in the year 750, that Herod died. If 
Christ were born a few months before that death, thirty years forward from that 
time brings us to the year 780, as that in which our Lord's ministry commenced ; 
the two independent computations thus singularly confirming one another 



THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE 129 

utterance ; it does so in the pew, when in the hour hallowed to prayer 
and praise the chambers of thought and imagery within are crowded 
with worldly guests. Know ye not, brethren, that ye are the temple 
of God ; and that the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are ? 
Would that half the zeal the Saviour showed in cleansing the earthlj 
building were but shown by each of us in the purifying and cleansing 
of our hearts! Truly it is no easy task to drive out thence every 
thing that defileth in his sight, to keep out as well as to put out ; for, 
quick as were those buyers and sellers of old in coming back to their 
places in the temple and resuming their occupations there, quicker 
still are those vain and sinful desires, dispositions, imaginations, 
which in our moments of excited zeal we have expelled from our 
hearts, in returning to their old and well-loved haunts. The Lord of 
the temple must come himself to cleanse it ; come, not once or twice 
as in the case of the temple at Jerusalem; come, not as a transient 
visitor, but as an abiding guest ; not otherwise than by his own in- 
dwelling shall these unhallowed inmates be ejected and kept without, 
and the house made worthy of Him who deigns to occupy it. 



129a THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 

Some of the most remarkable disclosures of truth were made by 
Christ in conversation with individuals. Especially are these per- 
sonal interviews given by John in the Fourth Gospel, in which the 
two that compose the present Study are found. And what a contrast 
do they present! 

One was in Jerusalem, where the official and acccredited leaders 
of Jewish life rested in a proud sense of sanctity and exclusiveness. 
The other was in the midst of Samaria, the region counted by these 
officials outlawed and accursed. The one was with a member of the 
Sanhedrim; the other with a woman upon whom a Jewish rabbi was 
not to look, still less with whom he was to talk. But our Lord made 
no distinction in his outreach toward both of these souls; and because 
both as he went on with them proved hungry for the truth, he opened 
to each his illimitable store of heavenly instruction. 

It would appear that each of these individual souls occupied a key 
position, and therefore Christ could depart from the reserve which 
he showed through the early and middle period of his work as respects 
the utterance of his deepest truths. Nicodemus was fitted by his 
position asa " master in Israel " to have made known to him some of 
the fundamental principles of the completed divine plan of salvation; 
yet by his nature and relations he would not be inclined to seek to 
spread these forth prematurely. So Christ opened to him the great 
truth of the new birth, of the agency of the Holy Spirit, of the saving- 
work of the Son, of the redeeming love of the Father. Likewise, our 
Lord's conversation with the woman of Samaria was his first spiritual 
contact with a soul outside the circle of the chosen people, and it is 
not strange that it stirred the heart of the Saviour profoundly, ani 
that, finding her like Nicodemus religiously receptive he imparted to 
her the profound principle of the spirituality of God and of worship, 
and revealed himself as the one able to satisfy the innermost needs of 
her life. 

PART I. PREPARATION AND EARLY MINISTRY. 
Study 4. Two Wonderful Interviews. 

(1) Christ and Nicodemus 1296-138 

o. Unrecorded miracles at Jerusalem 1296 

b. They develop in most of those who witness them only a sur- 

face faith 1296 

c. But Nicodemus comes acknowledging that these miracles 

show that Christ is from God 130, 131 



THE CONVERSATION WITH NICODEMUS 1296 

d. Christ affirms the necessity of the new birth 132, 133 

e. He shows that this work of the Spirit is mysterious 134 

/. Yet that he as the Son of God has full knowledge of these 

transcendent things 135 

g. He declares the substance of his gospel of salvation 135, 136 

h. The truth he imparts falls into soil which produces a late 
but genuine harvest, and Nicodemus in the end is a true 

disciple 136-138 

(2) Christ and the woman of Samaria 138-149 

a. Christ's public ministry has opened in Jerusalem and Judea. . 138, 139 
6. His ministry through baptism is being contrasted with 

John's 139-141 

c. Christ deems it best to retire from Judea 141 

d. On his way to Galilee he passes through Samaria 141, 142 

e. Resting by Jacob's well, he says to a Samaritan woman, 

"Give me to drink" 143 

/. It leads into a conversation in which he reveals to her some 

of the highest spiritual truths 143-147 

g. He tarries for two days to minister to the Samaritans 147, 1 48 

h. Wherever there is thirst he is ready to satisfy it 148, 149 



XIII. 

The Conversation with Nicodemus* 

Cheist's first visit to Jerusalem, after his baptism, appears to 
have been a brief one : not longer, perhaps, than that usually paid by 
those who went up to the Passover. Besides the cleansing of the 
temple he wrought some miracles which are left unrecorded, but 
which we may believe were of the same kind as his subsequent 
ones, and these were generally miracles of healing. Many believed 
on him when they saw those miracles performed ; believed on him as 
a wonder-worker, as a man who had the great power of God at his 
command; but their faith scarcely went farther, involved in it little 
or no recognition of his true character and office. Although they 
believed in him, Jesus did not believe in them (for it is the same 
word which is used in the two cases.) Knowing what was in them, 
as he knew what was in all men, undeceived by appearance or pro- 
fession, he entered into no close or friendly relations with them ; made 
no hasty or premature discovery of himself. 

But there was one man to whom he did commit himself on the 
occasion of this first and short residence in Jerusalem, to whom he 

•John 3: 1-21. 



130 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

did make such a discovery of fcimself, as we shall presently see he 
never made to any other single person in the whole course of his 
ministry. This was a man of the Pharisees, one of the sect that 
became the most bitter persecutors of Christ ; a ruler too of the Jews, a 
man well educated, of good position, and in high office ; a member of 
the Sanhedrim. He was one of the body that not long ago had sent the 
deputation down to the Jordan to inquire about the Baptist. He knew 
all about John's ministry, about his announcing that the kingdom of God 
was at hand, that there was One coming after him who was to baptize 
not with water but with the Holy Ghost. He had been wondering 
what this ministry of John could mean, when Jesus appeared in the 
city, cleansed the temple, wrought those miracles. He saw that 
among the class to which he belonged, the appearance and acts of 
the young Nazarene, who had assumed and exercised such an author- 
ity within the courts of the temple, and when challenged had given 
such an unsatisfactory reply, had excited nothing but distrust and 
antipathy; a distrust and antipathy, however, in which he did not, 
could not share. He could not concur with those who spake of him 
as an ignorant rustic, a mere blind zealot, whom a fit of fanaticism 
had driven to do what he did in the temple ; still less could he agree 
with those who spake of him as an impostor, a deceiver of the people. 
We do not know what words of Christ's he heard, what acts of his 
he witnessed; but the impression had come upon him, whencesoever 
it came, that he was altogether different from what his fellow-rulers 
were disposed to believe. Could this indeed be the man of whom 
John spake so much ; could this be indeed the Christ, the Messiah 
for whom so many were longing? If he was, what new and higher 
truths would he unfold, what a glorious kingdom would he usher in ! 
Restless and unsatisfied with things as they were, all his Pharisaic 
strictness in the keeping of the law having failed to quiet his con- 
science and give comfort to his heart, Nicodemus was looking about 
and longing for further light. Perhaps this stranger, who was come 
to Jerusalem, may be able to help him. He may be poor and mean, 
a Galilean by birth, without official rank or authority; but what of 
that, if he be really what he seems, one clothed with a divine com- 
mission ; what of that, if he can quench in any way this thirst of 
heart and soul which burns within? If He could be seen by him 
alone, Jesus would surely lay aside that reserve which he appeared to 
maintain, and instruct him fully as to the mysteries of the coming 
kingdom. But how should such a private interview be brought 
about? He might send for Him; and sent for by one in his position, 
Jesus might not refuse to come. But then it would be noisel abroad 



THE CONVERSATION WITH NICODEMUS. 131 

that he had been entertaining the Nazarene in his dwelling. Or he 
might go to Him when He was teaching in public, but then it would 
be seen and known of all men that he had paid Him an open mark of 
respect. He was not prepared to face either of these alternatives ; he 
was too timid, thought too much of what his companions and friends 
and the general public of the city might think or say. Yet he is too 
eager to throw the chance away. He must see Jesus, and as his fears 
keep him from going to or sending for him by day, he goes by night, 
breaks in upon his retirement, asks and obtains the audience. 

There was something wrong, no doubt, in his choosing such a 
time and way for the interview. It would have been a manlier, more 
heroic thing for him to have braved all danger, and risen above all 
fear of man. But whatever blame we may choose on this ground to 
attach to Nicodemus, let it not obscure our perception of his obvious 
honesty and earnestness, his intense desire for further enlightenment, 
his willingness to receive instruction. He came by night, but he was 
the only one of his order who came at all. He came by night, but 
it was not to gratify an idle curiosity, but in the disquiet of a half- 
awakened conscience to seek for peace. "Rabbi," he says, as soon as 
he finds himself in Christ's presence. He salutes him with all respect. 
The Rabbis of the temple would have scorned the claim of one so 
young in years, unknown in any of their schools, who had given no 
proof of his acquaintance with their laws and their traditions — to be 
regarded as one of them. But the ruler, in all likelihood by many 
years Christ's senior, and one who on other grounds might have 
counted on being the saluted rather than the saluter, does not hesi- 
tate to address him thus: "Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher 
come from God : for no man can do these miracles that thou doest 
except God be with him." He shows at once his respect, his candor, 
his intelligence, and his faith. He does not doubt that these are 
real miracles which Jesus has been working; he is ready to trace to 
its true source the power employed in their accomplishment ; he is 
prepared at once to acknowledge that the worker of such miracles 
must be one sent and sanctioned by God. In saying so, he knows 
that he is saying more than perhaps any other man of his station in 
Jerusalem would be ready to say. He thinks that he says enough to 
win for himself a favorable reception. Yet, he is speaking far below 
the truth, much under his own half-formed conceptions and beliefs. 
It is but as a teacher, not as a prophet, much less the great Prophet, 
fchat he addresses Jesus. 

One might have expected that, having addressed him as such, he 
would go on to put the questions to which he presumed that such a 



132 THE LIFE OF CHRIS! 

teacher could give replies. But lie pauses, perhaps imagining that, 
gratified by such a visit, pleased at being saluted thus by one of the 
rulers, Jesus will salute him in return, and save him the trouble of 
inquiry by making some disclosures of the new doctrine which, as a 
teacher sent from God, he had come to teach; or by telling him 
something more about that new kingdom which so many were 
expecting to see set up. How surprised he must have been when so 
abruptly, yet so solemnly, without exchange of salutation or word of 
preface, Jesus says, " Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a man be 
born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Such a man as 
Nicodemus could scarcely have been so stupid as to believe that in 
speaking of being born again, Jesus meant a second birth of the 
body. He is so disconcerted, however, disappointed, perplexed, 
besides being perhaps a little irritated, by both the manner and the 
substance of the grave, emphatic utterance — one which, however 
general in its terms, was obviously spoken with a direct and personal 
reference — that, in his confusion, he seizes upon the expression as the 
only one that had as yet conveyed any definite idea to his mind — as 
affording him some ground of exception, some material for reply; and 
taking it in its literal sense, he says : " How can a man be born again 
when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's 
womb, and be born?" The wise and gentle teacher in whose hands 
he now is, takes no notice of the folly or the petulance of the remark. 
He reiterates what he had said, modifying, however, his expressions, 
so that Nicodemus could not fail to see of what kind of second birth 
it was that he was speaking: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except 
a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the 
kingdom of God." 

Had Nicodemus only had time at first to collect his thoughts, he 
would have remembered that it was no new term, framed now for the 
first time, that Jesus had been employing in speaking of a second 
birth; it being a proverbial expression with his countrymen with 
reference to those who became proselytes to the Jewish faith, and 
were admitted as such into the Jewish community, that they were as 
men new born. The outward mode of admitting such proselytes to 
the enjoyment of Jewish privileges was by baptism, by washing with 
water. John had adopted this rite, and by demanding that all Jews 
should be baptized with the baptism of repentance, as a preparation 
on their part for the coming of the kingdom, he had in fact, already 
proclaimed, that, as every heathen man became as a new man on 
entering into the commonwealth of Israel, so every Jewish man 
must become a new man before entering into that new kingdom which 



THE CONVERSATION WITH NICODEMUS. 133 

I lie Messiah was to introduce and establish. It was virtually to 
symbolize the importance and necessity of repentance — that change 
of mind and heart which formed the burden of his preaching, as a 
qualification in all candidates for admission into the kingdom — that 
John came baptizing with water. But he took great pains to inform 
his hearers that, while he baptized with water, there was One coming 
immediately who was to baptize with the. Holy Ghost. Was it likely 
then, or we may even say was it possible that, when Nicodemus now 
heard Jesus say, " Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, 
he cannot enter into the kingdom of God," he could fail to perceive 
the allusion to the water-baptism of John and the Spirit-baptism of 
the Messiah? In common with all his countrymen, Nicodemus had 
assumed that, be it what it might, come how or when it might, the 
Messianic kingdom would be one within which their very birth as 
Jews would entitle them to be ranked. This popular delusion John 
had already, by his baptism and his teaching, done something to rec- 
tify. The full truth it was reserved for Jesus to proclaim, and he 
does it now to Nicodemus. This master in Israel has come to Jesus 
to be taught ; let him know then that it is not a new doctrine, but 
a new life which Jesus has come to proclaim and to impart. It is not 
by knowing so much, or believing in such truths, or practising such 
duties, that a man is to qualify himself for becoming a subject of the 
spiritual kingdom of Jesus Christ. First of all, as a necessary pre- 
liminary, he must be born again; born of the Spirit, have spiritual 
life imparted, before he can see so as to apprehend its real nature, 
before he can enter so as to partake of its true privileges, the king- 
dom of God. This kingdom is not an outward or a national one, not 
the kingdom of a creed, or of an external organized community. It 
is a kingdom exclusively of the new-born — of those who have been 
begotten of the Spirit — of those who have been born again, not of 
blood, nor of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. For that 
which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit 
is spirit. 

A mystic thing it looks to Nicodemus, this second birth — this birth 
of the Spirit ; secret, invisible, impalpable ; its origin and issues hid- 
den, remote. "Marvel not," says Jesus, at its mysteriousness. The 
night is quiet around you, not a sound of bending branch or rustling 
leaf comes from the neighboring wood ; but now the air is stirred as 
by an invisible hand ; the sigh of the night breeze comes through the 
bending branches and rustling leaves ; you hear the sound ; but who 
can take you to that breeze's birthplace, and show you where and 
how it was begotten ; who can carry you to its place of sepulture, and 



134 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

sliow you where and how it dies ? Not that the wind — the air in 
motion — is a whit more wilful or capricious, or less obedient to fixed 
laws than any other elements, or is chosen upon that account to rep- 
resent the operations of God's Spirit on the souls of men. All its 
movements are fixed and orderly; but as the movements of an invis- 
ible agent, they elude our observation ; nor, if you sought for a mate- 
rial emblem of that hiddenness with which the Holy Spirit works, 
could you find in the whole creation one more apt than that which 
Jesus used, when he said to Nicodemus, "The wind bloweth where it 
listeth, and thou nearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence 
it cometh and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the 
Spirit." 

Already a dim apprehension of that for which he was being appre- 
hended of Christ has begun to dawn upon Nicodemus. He receives 
the truth as affirmed by Jesus as to the necessity of the new birth. 
He begins even to understand something as to its nature. Yet a 
haze still hangs over it. He wonders and he doubts — giving expres- 
sion to his feelings in the question, " How can these things be?" 

If Christ's answer may be taken as the best interpretation of this 
question, Nicodemus was now troubling himself not so much either 
with the nature or the necessity of the new birth, as with the manner 
of its accomplishment ; the kind of instrumentahty by which so great 
an inward change was to be effected; for, read aright, our Lord's 
reply is not only a description of that instrumentahty, but an actual 
employment of it. First, however, a gentle rebuke must be given: 
'Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? Hast 
thou forgotten all that is written in the book of the law and in the 
prophets about the coming of those days in which the Lord would 
pour out his Spirit upon all flesh ; about the new covenant that the 
Lord would then enter into with his people, one of whose two great 
provisions was to be this : " I will give them one heart, and I will put 
a uew spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their 
flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh " '? Ezek. 11 : 19. What 
had so often and so long beforehand been thus spoken of was now 
about to be executed. The Spirit of God was waiting to do his gra- 
cious work, in begetting many sons and daughters to the Lord. Let 
Nicodemus be assured of this, on the testimony of one whose knowl- 
edge of the spirit- world was immediate and complete. He had spo- 
ken very confidently about his knowledge, of Jesus. " We know," he 
had said, " thou art a teacher sent from God." Let him listen now 
to words of equal confidence, which no mere human teacher, though 
he were even sent by God, could well, upon such a subject, have 



THE CONVERSATION WITH NICODEMUS. 135 

employed: "Verily, verily I say unto thee, We speak that we do 
know, and testify that we have seen ; and ye receive not our witness." 
' This work of the Spirit in regenerating is connected with another— 
my own — in redeeming. The one is but an earthly operation; a 
work performed within men's souls ; but the other, how high have you 
to rise to trace it to its source ; how far to go to follow it to its 
issues ? " If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how 
shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?" 

'And yet who can speak of these heavenly things as I can do? 
You take me, Nicodemus, to be a teacher sent from God, perhaps 
you might even acknowledge me as a prophet; but know me that I 
am no other than He, the Son of man, the Son of God, coming down 
from heaven, ascending to heaven, but leaving not heaven behind me 
in my descent, bringing it along with me ; while here" on earth, being 
still in heaven. No man, I say unto thee, hath ascended up to 
heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man 
which is in heaven.' 

And having thus proclaimed the ground and certainty of his 
knowledge of all the earthly and all the heavenly things pertaining 
to the kingdom, Jesus goes on to preach his own gospel beforehand 
to Nicodemus, taking the lifting up of the serpent in the wilderness 
as the type to illustrate his own approaching lifting up on the cross, 
declaring this to be the great and gracious design of his death, that 
whosoever believeth in him might not perish, but have eternal life : 
" For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son ; 
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlast- 
ing life." 

It does not fall within our scope to illustrate at large or attempt 
to enforce the great truths about the one and only manner of enter- 
ing into Christ's spiritual kingdom ; about the universal need of the 
Spirit-birth in order to make this entrance ; about his own character 
and office; the manner and objects of his death; the faith which, 
trusting to him, brings with it everlasting life ; the moral guilt that 
lies in the act of rejecting him as a Redeemer; the true character of 
those tempers of mind and heart which prompt to faith on the one 
side and to unbelief on the other, which are all brought out in th« 
discourse of our Lord to Nicodemus. But it does fall precisely with- 
in our present design that I ask you to reflect a moment or two — 
arst, upon the time at which this discourse was delivered; and next, 
as to itb effect upon him to whom it was addressed. 

It was delivered weeks or months before the Sermon on the 
Mount, or any other of Christ's public addresses to the people 



136 THE LIFE OF OHKIST. 

Standing in time the first, it stands in character alone. You search 
in vain through all the subsequent discourses of our Lord for any 
such clear, compendious, comprehensive development of the Christian 
salvation: of its source in the love of the Father; its channel in the 
death of his only begotten Son ; and of the great Agent by whom it 
;s appropriated and applied. You search in vain for any other 
instance in which the three persons of the Trinity were spoken of by 
our Lord consecutively and conjunctly; to each being assigned his 
proper part in the economy of our redemption. It may even be 
doubted whether, in the whole range of the apostolic epistles, there 
be a passage of equal length in which the manner of our salvation 
through Christ is as fully and distinctly described. 

Delivered thus at the very beginning of our Lord's ministry, it 
utters a loud and unambiguous protest against the error of those 
who would have us to believe that there was a decided and essential 
difference between the earlier and later teachings of our Saviour ; 
between the doctrine taught by Christ and that taught afterwards by 
his apostles. It is quite true that, until within a few months of the 
final decease accomplished at Jerusalem, our Lord studiously avoided 
all reference to his death. - It is quite true that, in not a single 
instance — not even where one would most naturally have expected 
it — in the prayer that he taught to his disciples — is there an allusion 
by Jesus to that death, as supplying the ground of our forgiveness. 
But that this marked silence is misinterpreted, when it is inferred 
that he did not assign to it that place and importance given to it 
afterwards, we have here, in this discourse to Nicodeinus, the most 
convincing proof. I shall have occasion hereafter to refer to those 
considerations by which our Saviour was obviously influenced during 
the course of his personal ministry in not publicly unfolding the doc- 
trine of the cross. Let those, however, who delight to dwell on the 
simple and pure morality of the Sermon on the Mount, and to con- 
trast it with the doctrinal theology of the apostles, declaring their 
preference for the teachings of the Master above that of his disci- 
ples, but ponder well this first of all our Lord's discourses, and they 
will see that instead of any conflict there is a perfect harmony. 

But if he never afterwards unfolded his gospel so plainly or so 
fully, why did he do so now ? why reveal so much to Nicodeinus thai 
he appears to have withheld from the multitude ? Am I wrong ia 
regarding this as due in part to the very circumstance that this wag 
a nocturnal and a solitary interview with Nicodemus ? No one but 
this ruler of the Jews may have heard the words that Jesus spake 
that night, and he would be the last man to go and repeat them to 



THE CONVERSATION WITH NIOODEMUS. 137 

others. There is good reason to believe that the Gospel of St. John 
was written and published some years after those of the other evan- 
gelists. It is in the Gospel of St. John alone that the interview with 
Nicodemus is recorded. The other evangelists appear to have been 
ignorant of it. How the beloved disciple came to his knowledge of 
it it is not necessary for us to inquire. He may have received it 
from the lips of Nicodemus himself. Enough for us to know that it 
was not currently reported in the church till St. John gave it circula- 
tion. At any rate, we may be sure that it remained unknown all 
through the period of our Lord's own life. It was not, then, in vio- 
lation of the rule that he acted on afterwards that he spoke now so 
plainly and iully as he did to Nicodemus. It was a rare opportunity, 
one that never perhaps returned, to have before him one so qualified 
by capacity, by acquirement, by honesty, by earnestness, to receive 
the truth; and the very manner in which the Saviour hastened to 
reveal it is ( o us the proof that he saw good soil here into which to 
cast the seed, and the proof too how grateful to him the office of his 
hand in sowing it. 

He knew, indeed, that the seed then sown was long to be dor- 
mant. For three years there was no token of its germination. Nic- 
odemus never sought a second interview with Jesus, but kept studi- 
ously aloof. Once, indeed, and it is the only sight throughout three 
years that we get of him, he ventured to say a word in the Council 
against a hasty arrest and condemnation of Jesus, but he met with 
such a sharp rebuff that he never opened his lips again. The mem- 
orable words, however, of the midnight meeting at Jerusalem had not 
been forgotten. There was much in them that he could not under- 
stand. Who was He who had spoken of himself as the Son of man, 
the Son of God? of his ascending and descending to and from heaven? 
of being in heaven even when he stood there on earth ? He had spo- 
ken of his being lifted up, that men might believe in him, and believ- 
ing, might not perish, but have everlasting life. What could that 
lifting up of Jesus be, and how upon it could there hang such issues? 
Much to perplex here, yet much to stimulate ; for that life, that eter- 
nal life, of which Christ had spoken, was the very life that above all 
things he was longing to possess and realize. In this troubled state 
of mind and heart, with what an anxious eye would Nicodemus watch 
the after-current of our Lord's history! For a year and a half be 
had disappeared from Judea; was heard of only as saying and doing 
wonders down in Galilee. Then came the final visit to the capital, 
the great commotion in the temple, the raising of Lazarus, the seizure, 
the trial, the condemnation. Was Nicodemus present with the rest 



138 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

of the Council of which he was a member, on the morning of the 
crucifixion ? If he was, he must ingloriously have kept silence, for 
the vote was unanimous. I would rather believe, from what hap- 
pened on the after part of the day, that he was not present; did not 
)bey the hasty summons. With him or without him, the verdict is 
given. The license to crucify is extorted from the vacillating gov- 
ernor ; the cross is raised. At last the words that three years before 
had sounded in the ruler's listening ear, and which had since been 
frequently recalled, the mystery of their meaning unrevealed, are 
verified and explained. The cross is raised ; Jesus is lifted up. The 
darkened heavens, the reeling earth, the prayer for his crucifiers, the 
promise to the penitent who dies beside him, the voice of triumph at 
the close proclaim the death of that only begotten Son of God whom 
he had given to be the Saviour of the world. The scales drop off 
from the eyes they so long had covered. Fear goes out, and faith 
comes into Nicodemus' breast, a faith that plants him by Joseph's 
side in the garden, and unites their hands in the rendering of the last 
services to the body, which they buried in the new sepulchre. 

What a flood of light fell then on the hitherto mysterious words 
of the Crucified ; what a rich treasure of comfort would the medita- 
tion of them unfold all his life long afterwards to Nicodemus ; and 
what an honor to him that he was chosen as the man to whom were 
first addressed those words which have comforted so many millions 
since, and are destined to comfort so many millions more in the years 
that are to come : " God so loved the world, that he gave his only 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but 
have everlasting life." 



XIV. 

The Woman of Samaria* 

CoMma, as he did, to a community that had long been accus- 
tomed to act in its corporate capacity as a nation in covenant with 
God ; coming to be nationally received or nationally rejected as the 
Messiah ; a reception or rejection which could only be embodied in 
some decisive expression of the will of the nation, made through its 
authorized heads and representatives — our natural expectation is that 
Christ's public manifestation of himself would be made principally in 
Judea and at Jerusalem. And the actual opening of his public mini* 

* John 4. 



THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA. 139 

try convinces us that had no check or hindrance been interposed, had 
any readiness been shown by the rulers of the people to look favor- 
ably on his character and claims, Judea and Jerusalem would have 
been the chief scene of his labors. For before he opened his lips, as 
a teacher sent from God, to any Galilean audience, or in any provin- 
cial synagogue, he presented himself in the capital, and by a bold 
and striking act, fitted to draw all eyes upon him, asserted his author- 
ity within the temple, as the house of his Father, which it became him 
to cleanse. The bold beginning was well sustained by both word 
and deed, but no favorable impression was made. The only one of 
the rulers who made any approach came to him by night, and went 
away to lock up deep within his breast the wonderful revelation that 
was made to him. Jesus retired from Jerusalem, but lingered still 
in Judea, spending the summer months which succeeded the Pass- 
over in some district of the country, not far from that in which John 
was baptizing.* It seems strange to us that after the sign from 
heaven had been given that the greater than he had appeared, in- 
stead of joining himself to Jesus, as one of his disciples, John should 
have kept aloof, and continued baptizing, preserving thus a separate 
following of his own. And it seems equally strange, that now for a 
short time, and for this short time only, our Lord's disciples— the 
men who had voluntarily attached themselves to him, none of whom 
had as yet been separated from their earthly callings, or set apart as 
those through whom a new order of things was to be instituted — 
should also have engaged in baptizing, if not at the suggestion, yet 
by the permission and under the sanction of their Master. What- 
ever reasons we may assign for the separate baptisms of John and 
Jesus being for this short season contemporaneously sustained, they 
serve to bring out fully and in striking contrast the character and 
disposition towards Jesus of the Pharisees on the one hand and of 
the Baptist on the other. At first, in Judea as in Galilee, the com- 
mon people heard Christ gladly, and came in great numbers to be 
baptized. This for the Pharisees is a new matter of offence, out of 
which, however, they construct an implement of mischief, which 
they hasten to employ. There can be little doubt that the question 
which arose between John's disciples and the Jews was stirred by 
the latter, had respect to the relative value of the two baptisms, and 
was intended to sow the seeds of dissension between the two disci- 

* As yet all attempts have failed to identify the .ZEnon near Salim, to which 
from the banks of the Jordan John had now removed. It will, in all probability, 
be discovered somewhere northeast of Jerusalem, so situated that the way from 
it into Galilee lay naturally through Samaria. 



140 THE LIFE OF OHK1ST. 

pleships. Fresh from the dispute, and heated by it, some of John's 
disciples came to him, and said unto him, evidently with the tone of 
men complaining of a grievance by which their feelings had been 
hurt : " Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou 
barest witness, behold, the same baptizeth, and all men come to him." 
"We may be all ready enough to acknowledge the superiority of 
another to ourselves in regard to qualities or acts in which we never 
sought for prominence or praise. Even as to those qualities and 
acts in which we may have ourselves excelled, we may not be un- 
willing to confess the superiority of another, provided that we do 
not come into direct comparison with him, in presence of those who 
embody the expression of their preference in some marked piece of 
conduct. But it does subject our weak nature to an extreme trial 
when, by one's side, in the very region in which he has attained ex- 
traordinary and unlooked-for success, he sees another rise whose 
success so far outstrips his own as to throw it wholly into the shade. 
Remember, now, that the Baptist was but a man, with all the com- 
mon infirmities of our nature clinging to him ; that up to the time he 
had baptized Jesus, his course had been one of unparalleled popu- 
larity ; that from that time the tide of the popular favor began to ebb 
away from him, and to rise around this other, till at last he hears 
the tidings, He baptizeth, and all men now go to him. And then, 
listen to his answer to the complaint of his disciples : " A man," he 
said, " can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven." 
' This growing baptism of Jesus, this lesser baptism of mine, are both 
as Heaven has willed. The multitudes that once flocked to me were 
sent by God ; the power which I had over them I got from God ; and 
if the Lord who sent and gave is pleased now to withdraw them from 
me, to bestow them upon another, still will I adore his name. Nor 
is it bare submission to his will I cherish. I hear of, and I rejoice at 
the success of Christ. " Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, 
I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him. He that hath 
the bride is the bridegroom : but the friend of the bridegroom, which 
standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly, because of the bride- 
groom's voice. This my joy therefore is fulfilled. He must increase, 
but I must decrease." ' Rare and beautiful instance of an unen vying 
humility; all the rarer and more beautiful as occurring not in one of 
weak and gentle nature, but in a character of masculine energy, in 
which are often to be found only the stronger passions of humanity. 
A rare and beautiful sight it is to see the gentle Jonathan not only 
give way to David> as successor to his father's kingdom, but content 
to stand by David's side and live under the shadow of his throne ; 



THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA. HI 

but a rarer, I believe, arid still more beautiful thing it is to see the 
strong-willed Baptist not only make room for Jesus, but rejoice 
that his own light, which had "shone out so brilliantly, enlightening 
for a season the whole Jewish heavens, faded away and sunk out o( 
sight in the beams of the rising Sun of righteousness." And John's 
final testimony upon this occasion to the character and office of Jesus 
is as striking as the involuntary display that he makes of his own 
character, going much beyond what he had said before, and contain- 
ing much that bears a singular likeness to what Jesus had shortly 
before said of himself to Nicodemus : " He that cometh from above 
is above all ; he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the 
earth ; he that cometh from heaven is above all : and what he hath 
seen and heard, that he testifieth; and no man receiveth his testi- 
mony. He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that 
God is true. For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of 
God : for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him. The 
Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand. He 
that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life : and he that belie\eth 
not the Son shall not see life ; but the wrath of God abideth on 
him." John 3: 31-36. 

Such was the testimony elicited from John on being told of the 
large concourse of people which had gathered round Jesus and his 
disciples. "Very different was the effect which this intelligence pro- 
duced in Jerusalem. It fanned the hostile feeling already kindled in 
the breasts of the Pharisees. How that feeling might have mani- 
fested itself had Jesus continued in Judea, his disciples gone on bap- 
tizing, and the people kept flocking to them, we cannot tell. As from 
one quarter there burst about this time on the head of John the storm 
that closed his public career, so from another quarter might a storm 
have burst on the head of Jesus with like effect. 

Foreseeing the peril to which he might be exposed, Jesus, " when 
he knew how the Pharisees had heard that he made and baptized 
more disciples than John, left Judea, and departed again into Gali- 
lee," his nearest and most direct route lay through the central district 
of Samaria. This district was inhabited by people of a foreign origin, 
and with a somewhat curious history. When the king of Assyria car- 
ried the Ten Tribes into captivity, it is said that, in order to fill the void 
which their exile created, he brought "men from Babylon, and from 
Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and 
placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel; 
and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof." 2 Kings 
17 : 24 These certainly were idolaters, worshippers of a strange ined- 



142 THE LIFE OF CHBIST. 

ley of divinities, and brought with them their old faiths to their ue\¥ 
home. Shortly after their settlement, a frightful plague visited them, 
and it occurred to themselves, or was suggested by the neighboring 
Israelites, that it had fallen upon them because of their not worship* 
ping the old divinity of the place. In their alarm they sent an em- 
bassy to their monarch, who, either humoring or sharing their fears, 
sent one of the captive Jewish priests to instruct them in the Israeli- 
tish faith. This faith they at once accepted and professed, combining 
it with their old idolatries : " They feared the Lord," we are told, " and 
served their graven images." 2 Kings 17:41. Gradually, however, 
they were weaned from their ancient superstitions. When, under the 
decree of Cyrus, the captives of Judah and Benjamin, returning from 
Babylon, set about rebuilding the temple at Jerusalem, the Samari- 
tans proposed to join them in the work. The proposal was haughtily 
rejected, and that rejection was the first of a long series of disputes. A 
fresh ground of offence arose when Manasseh, a grandson of one, and 
brother of another high priest, had, contrary to the laws and cus- 
toms of the Jews, married a daughter of Sanballat, the governor of 
the province of Samaria. Called upon to renounce this alliance and 
repudiate his wife, Manasseh, rather than do so, fled from Jerusalem, 
and put himself under the protection of his father-in-law. A consid- 
erable number of the Jews who were dissatisfied with the great strict- 
ness with wmich Nehemiah was administering affairs at Jerusalem, 
followed him. The Samaritans, thus strengthened in numbers, and 
having now a member of one of the highest families of the priesthood 
among them, erected a rival temple on Mount Gerizim, and set up 
there a ritual of worship in strict accordance with the Mosaic insti- 
tute. Their history from this time to the time of Christ is a very 
chequered one. Their territory was invaded by John Hyrcanus, one 
of the family of the Maccabees, who plundered their capital, and raz- 
ing the stately temple on Mount Gerizim from its foundations, left it 
a heap of ruins, so that when Jesus passed that way, an altar reared 
upon these rains was all that Gerizim could boast. 

Notwithstanding all these vicissitudes, and all the harsh hostilities 
to which they were exposed, the Samaritans became purer and purer 
in their faith, till all relics of their Medo-Persian idolatries had dis- 
appeared. They received, as of divine authority, the five Books of 
Moses, the Pentateuch, but they rejected all the books of history and 
prophecies which followed, and which were full, as the Jews believed, 
of intimations of the future subjection of the whole world to Israeli- 
tish sway, and the establishment of Jerusalem as the central place 
of worship and the seat of universal empire. 



THE WOMAN OF SAMAEIA. 143 

But though the Jews despised the Samaritans as a people of a 
mixed origin and a mutilated faith, and the Samaritans repaid the 
contempt, we are not to think that the two communities lived so 
much apart that there was no traffic or intercourse between them 
There was little or no interchange of kindly or social feeling; but it 
was quite within the limits of the common usage for the disciples to 
go into a Samaritan town, to buy bread for themselves and their 
Master by the way. 

Their morning's walk had carried Jesus and his disciples across or 
along the plain of Mukhna to the entrance of that narrow valley 
which lies between .Mounts Ebal and Gerizim. Here, upon a spur of 
the latter height which runs out into the plain, was Jacob's Well ; the 
town of Sychar, the ancient Shechem, the modern Nablous, lying 
about a mile and a half west, up in the valley, at the base of Geri- 
zim. It was the sixth hour — our twelve o'clock — and the Syrian sun 
glared hotly upon the travellers. Wearied with the heat of the day 
and the toil of the morning, Jesus sat down by the well-side, while 
his disciples went on to Sychar to make the necessary purchases. As 
Jesus is sitting by the well alone, a woman of Samaria approaches. 
He fixes his eye upon her as she comes near; watches her as she pro- 
ceeds to draw the water, waiting till the full pitcher is upon the well- 
mouth, and then says to her, " Give me a drink." He is a Jew; she 
knows it by his dress and speech. Yet as one willing to be indebted 
to her, he asks a favor at her hands ; a favor for which, if his look do 
not belie him, he will be grateful. Not as one unwilling to grant the 
favor, but surprised at its being asked, her answer is: "How is it that 
thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, who am a woman of Samaria?" 
He will answer this question, but not in the way that she expects. 
The manner of his dispensation of the great gift he came from heav- 
en to bestow stands embodied in the words: "Thou wouldest have 
asked, and I would have given thee living water."* 

* There is no doubt that the well still shown to travellers near Nablous is the 
well of Jacob. Its position near to Sychar ; its importance as inferred from ita 
dimensions, being a well of nine feet in diameter and seventy-five in depth ; cut 
out of the solid rock, with sides hewn and smooth as Jacob's servants may be 
supposed to have left them — go far, of themselves, to determine its identity ; and 
the conclusion is confirmed by an undivided, unbroken tradition — Jewish, Sa- 
maritan, Arabian, Turkish, Christian. 

Besides the absence of all doubt as to its identity, there is another circum 
stance which surrounds it with a peculiar sacredness. It is the one and onh 
limited and well-defined locality in Palestine that you can connect with the pres- 
ence of the Kedeemer. You cannot in all Palestine draw another circle of lim- 
ited diameter within whose circumference you can be absolutely certain thai 



Ill THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

The woman has taken him to be a common Jew, an ordinary wa}r- 
farer, whom thirst and the fatigue of travel had overcome, forcing 
him perhaps unwillingly to ask for water to drink. He will fix her 
attention upon himself; he will stir up her feminine curiosity by tell- 
ing her tha*j he who asks has something on his part to give; that if 
she only knew who he was, and what that living water was which he 
had at command, instead of stopping to inquire why he had asked 
water of her, she would be asking it of him, and what she asked he 
without question would have given. Living water! — better water 
than that which she has in her pitcher. Could it be by going deeper 
down, and getting nearer to the bubbling spring beneath, that he 
could get such water ; or was it water of superior quality from some 
other well than this of Jacob ? " Sir," she says, addressing him with 
awakening interest and an increasing respect, " Sir," she says, in her 
ignorance and confusion, " thou hast nothing to draw with, and the 
well is deep : from whence then hast thou that living water ? Art thou 
greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank there- 
of himself, and his children, and his cattle ?" Her thoughts are wan- 
dering away back to the first drinkers at this well, when its waters 
first burst out in their freshness, imagining that it must be of them, 
or of the water of some other neighboring well, that this stranger 
had been speaking. Again, waiving as before all direct reply to her 

Jesus once stood, except round Jacob's Well. I had the greatest possible desire 
to tread that circle round and round, to sit here and there and everywhere around 
that well-mouth ; that I might gratify a long-cherished wish. But never was 
disappointment greater than the one which I experienced when I reached the 
spot. Close by it, in early Christian times, they built a church, whose ruins now 
cover the ground in its immediate neighborhood. Over the well itself they 
erected a vaulted arch, through a small opening in which, travellers, a hundred 
years, crept down into a chamber ten feet square, which left but a narrow mar- 
gin on which to stand and look down into the well. This vaulted covering has 
now fallen in, choking up so completely the mouth of the well, that it is only 
here and there, through apertures between the blocks of stone, that you can find 
an entrance into the well. I speak of it as I found it last year. It must have 
been more accessible to travellers even a few years ago ; but year by year the 
rubbish that is constantly being thrown into it accumulates, and the opeLing at 
the top is becoming more closed. The Mussulmans of the neighborhood, seeing 
the respect in which it is held by Christians, appear to take a pleasure in ob- 
structing and defiling it. You cannot sit, then, by Jacob's Well, or walk around 
it, or look down into its waters. It is stated upon good authority, that recently 
the well, and the site around it, have been purchased by the Russian church. 
Lei us hope that they will clear away all the stones and rubbish, and leave it 
clear and open, as Jesus found it, when, weary and way-worn, he sat down be- 
ude it 



THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA. 145 

question, Jesus with increased solemnity says : " "Whosoever drinkeilt 
of this water shall thirst again : but whosoever drinketh of the watei 
that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall 
give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting 
life." It is not this water, then; it is no common water; it is water 
that this man alone can give; water which is not to be taken in 
draughts, with which you may quench your thirst now, and then wait 
till the thirst comes back again ere another draught be taken; but 
water of which a man should constantly be drinking, and if he did so 
would be constantly satisfied, so that there -would be no recurring 
intervals of desire and gratification — this water as received turning 
into a well within the man himself, springing up into everlasting life. 
Beginning to understand a little, seeing this at least, that it was of 
some element altogether different from any water that she had ever 
tasted, yet clinging still to the notion that it must be some kind of 
material water that he means, she says: "Sir, give me this water, 
that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw." 

One part of Christ's object has now been gained ; he has awa- 
kened not an idle, but a very eager curiosity ; he has fixed the wom- 
an's attention on himself as having some great benefit in his hand 
which he is not unwilling to bestow. Through a figurative descrip- 
tion of what this benefit is, he will not or cannot carry her farther at 
present. Abruptly breaking the conversation off at this point, he 
says to her: " Go, call thy husband, and come hither." With great 
frankness she says, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "Thou 
hast well said, I have no husband, for thou hast had five husbands, 
and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband ; in that saidst thou 
truly ' In the past domestic history of this woman there had been 
much that was peculiar, though up to the last connection she had 
formed there may not have been any thing that was sinful. Christ'a 
object, however, was not so much to convict her of bygone or exist- 
ing guilt, as to convince her that he was in full possession of all the 
secrets of her past life, and so to create within her a belief in his 
more than human insight. Not so much as one overwhelmed with 
the sense of shame, but rather as one surprised into a new belief as to 
the character and capabilities of the stranger who addresses her, she 
replies, " Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet." If she had been 
a woman of an utterly abandoned character, whose whole bygone 
life had been one series of flagrant offences, whose conscience, long 
seared with iniquity, Christ was now trying to quicken — very curious 
would it appear that so soon as the quickening came, waiving all 
questions about her own character, she should so instantly have put 

UfeofCbrlT 10 



146 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

the question about the true place of religious worship, whether here 
at Gerizim, or there at Jerusalem. 

There may have been an attempt to parry conviction, and to turn 
aside the hand of the convincer, by raising questions about places 
and forms of worship; but I cannot think, had this been the spirit 
and motive of this woman's inquiries, that Jesus would have dealt 
with them as he did; for, treating them evidently as the earnest 
inquiries of one wishing to be instructed, assuming all the dignity of 
that office which had been attributed to him, he says to her, 'Wom- 
an, believe me, the hour -cometh (I speak as one before whose eye the 
whole history of the future stands revealed ; the hour cometh — I came 
myself into the world to bring it on) when that strong bias to wor- 
ship that lies so deep in the hearts of men, shall have found at last 
its one only true and worthy object in that God and Father of all, 
who made all, and who loves all, and has sent me to reveal him to 
all; when, stripped of all the restraints that have hitherto confined it 
to a single people, a single country, a single town ; relieved of all the 
supports that were required by it in its weak and tottering child- 
hood — the spirit of a true piety shall go forth in freedom over the 
globe, seeking for those — whatever be the places they choose, the 
outward forms that they adopt — for those who will adore and love 
and serve him in spirit and in truth, and wherever it finds them, 
owning them as the true worshippers of the Father. "Woman, be- 
hove me, the hour cometh, when neither in this mountain nor yet in 
Jerusalem, nor here, nor there, nor anywhere exclusively, shall men 
worship the Father. " God is a Spirit ; and they that worship him, 
must worship him in spirit and in truth." ' The newness, the breadth, 
the sublimity, if not also the truth of his teaching, at once suggested 
to the mind of the listener the thought of that Messiah for whom 
every Samaritan and Jew alike were looking. "I know," she said, 
" that Messias cometh. When he is come he will tell us all things." 
Jesus saith to her, " I that speak unto thee am he." 

Why was it that that which he so long and studiously concealed 
from the Jewish people, that which he so strictly enjoined his dis- 
ciples not to make known to them, was thus so simply, clearly, and 
directly told ? In the woman herself to whom the wonderful revela- 
tion was made, there may have been much to draw it forth. The 
gentle surprise with which she meets the request of the Jewish 
stranger; the expression of respect she uses so soon as he begins 
to speak of God, and some gift of his she might enjoy ; her guileless 
confession when once she found she was actually in a prophet's 
presence ; her instant readiness to believe that Jew though he was — 



THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA. 147 

apparently of no note or mark among his brethren — he was yet a 
prophet ; her eager question about the most acceptable way of wor- 
shipping the Most High ; the quick occurrence of the coming Mes- 
siah to her thoughts ; the full, confiding, generous faith that she at 
once reposed in him when he said, " I that speak unto thee am he ;" 
Uer forgetfulness of her individual errand to the well ; her leaving her 
pitcher there behind her; her running into the city to call all the 
men of Sychar, saying, "Come, see a man who told me all things that 
ever I did; is not this the Christ?" all conspire to convince us that, 
sinful though she was, she was hungering and thirsting after right- 
eousness, waiting for the consolation of Israel, we trust prepared to 
hail the Saviour when he stood revealed. 

But besides her individual character, there was also the circum- 
stance that she was a Samaritan. It is the first time that Jesus 
comes into close, private, personal contact with one who is not of the 
seed of Israel; for though she claimed Jacob as her father, neither 
this woman nor any of the tribe she belonged to were of Jewish 
descent. "I am not come," said Jesus, afterwards defining the gene- 
ral boundaries of his personal ministry, "but to the lost sheep of the 
house of Israel." When he sent out the seventy, his instructions to 
them were : " Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city 
of the Samaritans enter ye not." And yet there were a few occasions, 
and this is the first of them, in which Christ broke through the 
restraints under which it pleased him ordinarily to act. I believe 
that there are just four instances of this kind recorded in the Saviour's 
life : that of the woman of Samaria, of the Roman centurion, of the 
Canaanitish woman, of the Greeks who came up to Jerusalem. All 
these were instances of our Lord's dealings with those who stood 
without the pale of Judaism, and as we come upon them in the nar- 
rative, we shall be struck with the singular interest which Jesus took 
in each ; the singular care that he bestowed in testing and bringing 
out to view the simplicity and strength of the desire towards him, 
and faith in him, that were displayed ; the fulness of the revelations 
of himself that he made, and of that satisfaction and delight with 
which he contemplated the issue. It was the great and good Shep- 
herd, stretching out his hand across the fence, and gathering in a 
lamb or two from the outfields, in token of the truth that there were 
other sheep which were out of the Jewish fold, whom also he was 
in due time to bring in, so that there should be one fold and one 
shepherd. 

Our idea, that it was this circumstance — her Samaritan national- 
ity — which lent such interest, in our Saviour's own regard, to hia 



148 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

interview with this woman by the well-side, is confirmed by casting a 
glance at its result. Jesus at their entreaty turned aside, and abode 
two days with the Sycharites. You read of no sign or wonder 
wrought, no miracle performed, save that miracle of knowledge which 
won the woman's faith. Though no part of it is recorded, his teach- 
ing for those few days in Sychar was, in its general character, liko to 
his teaching by the well-mouth, and on the ground alone of the 
truthfulness, the simplicity, the purity, the spirituality, and the 
sublimity of that teaching, many believed on him, declaring they 
knew that this was indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world. 

The phrase is so familiar to the Christian ear, that we may fail to 
mark its singularity as coming from the lips of these rude Samari- 
tans. No Saviour this for Jew alone, or Samaritan alone; for any 
one age or country. Not his the work to deliver from mere outward 
thraldom, to establish either in Jerusalem or elsewhere any temporal 
kingdom : his the wider and more glorious office to emancipate the 
human spirit, and be its guide to the Father of the spirits of all flesh. 
Compare the notions which these simple villagers had of the Mes- 
siah, with those prevalent among the Jews ; compare with them any 
of the most intelligent of our Lord's apostles up to the day of Pente- 
cost, and your very wonder might create doubt, did you not remember 
that it was not from the books of Daniel and Zachariah and Ezekiel, 
the books from which the Jews by false interpretations derived their 
ideas of the Messiah's character and reign, that the Samaritans de- 
rived theirs, but from the Pentateuch alone, the five books of Moses : 
and when you turn to the latter, and look at the prophecies regard- 
ing Christ which they contain, you will find that the two things about 
him to which they point — that he should be a prophet sent from God, 
and that his office should have respect to all mankind, that to him 
should the gathering of the people be, and that in him should all 
families of the earth be blessed — were the very two things that the 
faith of these Samaritans embraced when they said, "We know that 
this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the ivorld" 

The conversation by the well, the two fruitful days at Sychar, 
what is the general lesson that they convey? That wherever Christ 
finds an open listening ear, he has glad tidings that he is ready to 
pour into it ; that wherever he finds a thirsting soul, he has living 
waters with which he delights to quench its thirst; that to all who 
are truly seeking him, he drops disguise and says: "Behold, even I 
that speak unto you, am he;" that wherever he finds minds arid 
hearts longing after a re relation of the Father, and the true mode of 
worshipping him, to such is the revelation given. Had you but stood 



THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA 149 

by Jacob's well, and seen the look of Jesus, and listened to the tones 
of his voice ; or had you been in Sychar during those two bright and 
happy days, hearing the instructions so freely given, so gratefully 
received, you would have had the evidence of sense to tell you with 
what abounding joy to all who are waiting and who are willing, Jesus 
breaks the bread and pours out the water of everlasting life. Multi- 
plied a thousandfold is the evidence to the same effect now offered to 
the eye and ear of faith. Still from the lips of the Saviour of the 
world, over all the world the words are sounding forth: "If any man 
thirst, let him come to me and drink." Still the manner of his dis- 
pensation of the great gift stands embodied in the words : " Thou 
wouldest have asked, and I would have given thee living water." 
And still these other voices are heard catching up and re-echoing oui 
Lord's own gracious invitation : " And the Spirit and the bride say, 
Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is 
athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life 
freely." 



149a THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 

There may be said to be two distinct types of work on the part 
of Christ during the period of this lesson, as pointed out by the author 
on pages 174, 175. 

During the first part of the time, John the Baptist was still in the 
field prosecuting his mission as Christ's forerunner. Jesus therefore 
made this a time when he himself confined his work mostly to pre- 
senting himself as Messiah to the Jewish leaders in Judea and Jerusalem, 
and testing their attitude toward him, which was one of rejection. 

But the time came when John was cast into prison, and the Saviour 
then felt that the point had come when he would more publicly pro- 
claim the new kingdom in discourses such as those in the synagogues 
at Nazareth and Capernaum and throughout Galilee, and would begin 
definitely to summon certain men to leave their ordinary pursuits 
and to follow him as those who could be prepared to become 
apostles. As can be noted, the first of these types of work closes 
and the second begins in this Study. 



PART I. PREPARATION AND EARLY MINISTRY. 

Study 5. First Public Cures and Discourses. 

(1) Christ's devotion to spiritual work 1496-151 

a. His meat to do the Father's will 1496 

b. Ripeness of the spiritual harvest 150 

c. Sower and reaper can rejoice together 150, 151 

(2) Healing of the nobleman's son 151-155 

a. The father comes from Capernaum to see Jesus at Cana. . . . 151, 152 

b. Christ's call for a higher type of faith 152-154 

c. The nobleman responds to the call and returns 154, 155 

d. His son is cured 155 

e. The nobleman and his household become true believers .... 155 

(3) Comparison with the case of the centurion's servant 155-157 

a. Both are cures at a distance, but Christ's method with the 

applicants is different 155, 156 

6. The centurion begins with unbounded faith 156 

c. Christ announces that he will come down and heal the 

servant 156 

d. This opens the way for the centurion's indication of his 

wonderful faith 156 

e. Jesus' words of commendation and warning 156, 157 

(4) Healing of the infirm man at the pool of Bethesda 157-166 

a. Jesus is at Jerusalem probably at the second Passover of his 

ministry and visits the pool of Bethesda 157, 158 



THE NOBLEMAN AND THE CENTURION 14% 



b. He finds the infirm man who for thirty-eight years has 

sought relief 159 

c. By obeying the word of Christ the man is restored, takes 

up his bed, and goes his way > 159 

d. Controversy of Christ with the Jews over his healing on the 

Sabbath 159, 160 

e. Christ reveals that he is one with the Father in his works 161-166 

'5) Christ's first visit to Nazareth and rejection 166-174 

a. Approach to Nazareth from the south 166, 167 

b. Situation of town and suggestions to the eye 167, 168 

c. Christ's Scripture selection and discourse 168-170 

d. Anger of the people and his deliverance 170, 171 

e. Meaning of the event 172-174 

(6) Jesus' intense activity in Capernaum and Galilee 174-183 

a. What went before was a testing of the Jews 174, 175 

b. Removes to Capernaum 176 

c. He now calls his first apostles 176 

d. A Sabbath filled with words and healing deeds 177-180 

e. Christ's period of solitary prayer 180 

/. His circuit through eastern Galilee 180-183 



xv. 

The Jewish Nobleman and the Roman Centurion.* 

Seated by the side of Jacob's well, and seeing the Samaritan 
woman draw water out of it, Jesus seizes on the occasion to discourse 
to her of the water of life. So soon as she hears from his own lips 
that he is the Messiah, this woman leaves her water-pot behind her, 
and hurries into the neighboring city to announce to others the great 
discovery which has been made to her. She has scarcely left the 
Saviour's side, ere his disciples present themselves with the bread 
which they had bought in Sychar, offering it, and saying to him, 
" Master, eat." But as if hunger had gone from him, and he cared not 
now for food, he answers, " I have meat to eat that ye know not of." 
Wondering at his manner, his appearance, his speech, so different 
from what they had expected, the disciples say to one another — it is 
the only explanation that occurs to them — " Hath any man brought 
him aught to eat?" Correcting the false conception, our Lord replies : 
" My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish his 
work." He had been eating that meat, he had been doing that will, 
while they were away ; and so grateful had it been to him to be so 
engaged, so happy had he been in instructing a solitary woman, and 
* John 4 : 46-54 ; Luke 7 : 1-10. 



150 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

sending her away, in full belief in his Messiahship, to go and bring 
others to him, that in the joy of a spirit whose first desire had been 
granted to it, the bodily appetite ceases to solicit, and the hunger oi 
an hour ago is no longer felt. She is gone, but already foreseeing all, 
he anticipates her return — hears and acts upon the invitation given, 
has the fruit of these two productive days at Sychar before his eyes, 
looking upon the few sheaves then gathered in as the first-fruits of a 
still wider, richer harvest. The idea of that harvest filling his mind, 
he looks over the fields around him, and blending the natural and 
the spiritual together, he says to his disciples : " Say not ye, There 
are yet four months, and then cometh harvest ? Behold, I say unto 
you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, for they are white 
already to harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gath- 
ereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that 
reapeth may rejoice together. And herein is that saying true, One 
soweth, and another reapeth." How many contrasts as well as anal- 
ogies between the husbandry of nature and the husbandry of grace 
do these words set forth ! The sower in the fields of nature has 
always four months to wait ; such is the interval in Palestine between 
seed-time and harvest. In those other fields in which Jesus is the 
chief sower, as in the very corner of them at Sychar, sometimes the 
seed has scarcely sunk into the soil ere it springs up ready for the 
reaper's hands. Then not seldom the ploughman overtakes the 
reaper, and the reapers and the sowers go on together. And yet 
there is often, too, an interval; nor is it always even generally true 
that it is he who sows who reaps. Nowhere is the common proverb, 
that one soweth and another reapeth, oftener verified than here. In 
the spiritual domain it is the lot of some to do little else all their 
lives than sow, to sow long and laboriously without seeing any fields 
whitening unto the harvest ; it is the lot of others to have little else to 
do than gather in the fruits of others' labors; or, looking at the 
broad history of the world and of the church, can we not mark cer- 
tain epochs which we would particularly characterize as times of 
sowing, others as times of reaping, sometimes separated by wide 
intervals, sometimes running rapidly into one another ? But whether 
they be the same or different agents that are employed in the sowing 
and in the reaping; whether longer space intervene or the sowing 
and the reaping go together, one thing is true, that when the harvest 
cometh, and the everlasting life, towards which all the labor has been 
tending, is reached, then shall there be a great and a mutual rejoi- 
cing — the gladness of those to whom it is given to see that their laboi 
has not been in vain in the Lord. 



THE NOBLEMAN AND THE CENTURION. 151 

It has always been a question whether there was any allusion 
made or intended by Christ to the actual condition of the fields 
around him as he spake. I cannot but think, though it may be in 
opposition to the judgment of some of our first scholars, that there 
was. Jesus was speaking at the time when there were as yet four 
months unto the h arrest. If it were so, then we have good ground 
for settling at what period of the year this visit of our Lord to Sychar 
took place. The harvest in Palestine begins about tke middle of 
April. Four months back from that time carries us to the middle of 
December, the Jewish seedtime. If so, the interval between the first 
Passover at which our Lord had his conversation with Nicodemus, 
which took place, as we know, at the commencement of the early 
harvest, and the conversation with the woman of Samaria, an inter- 
val of no less than eight months, was spent by Jesus in Judea, giv- 
ing to the rulers of the people a privileged opportunity of considering 
Christ's character and claims. Nothing but disappointment, neglect, 
indifference, or alienation having been manifested, Jesus retired to 
Galilee, taking Samaria by the way. The two days at Sychar pre- 
sented a striking contrast to his reception in Judea. How will they 
stand in comparison with the reception that awaits him in Galilee ? 

Cana lies farther north than Nazareth. The road to the one 
would lead close to, if not through the other. On this occasion 
Jesus appears to have passed by Nazareth. Perhaps it was to avoid 
such a reception as he knew to be awaiting him there, or it may have 
been simply because Mary and the family had shifted their residence, 
and were now living near their relatives at Cana. The rumor of the 
first miracle which he had wrought there some months before may 
have spread widely in the neighborhood. It was done, however, so 
quietly, and in such a hidden manner, that one can well conceive of 
different versions of it going abroad. It was different with those 
reports which the Galileans who had been up at the last Passover 
brought back from Jerusalem. Our Lord's miracles there, whatever 
they were, were done openly ; many had believed because of them. 
The Galileans who were at the feast had seen them all, and on their 
return home had filled the country with the noise of them, all the 
more gratified, perhaps, that he who had drawn all eyes upon him at 
Jerusalem was one of themselves. And now it is told abroad that he 
has come back from Judea and is at Cana. 

The tidings reach the ear of a nobleman in Capernaum, a Jew of 
high birth connected with the court of Herod Antipas, at the very time 
that a grievous malady is on his son, and has brought him to the very 
brink of death. He had not heard, perhaps, that Jesus had restored 



152 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

the dying to health ; so far as we know, the healing of his son may 
have been the first miracle of that kind which Jesus wrought; but he 
has heard of his turning the water into wine, he has heard of the 
wonders wrought at Jerusalem. He by whom such miracles had 
been done should be able to rebuke disease. It is at least worth try- 
ing whether he will or can. The distance to Cana is but a short one, 
some twenty miles or so. He will send no servant, he will go himself, 
and make the trial. He went, saw Jesus, told him his errand, and 
besought him that he would come down and heal his son. Why was 
it that before Jesus made any reply, or gave any indication of his 
purpose, he said, as the fruit of some deep inward thought which the 
application had suggested, " Except ye see signs and wonders ye will 
not believe"? It was because he saw all that was in that man, all 
the motives by which he had been prompted to this visit; the strong 
affection for his son, which Jesus will not rebuke ; his willingness to 
be at any pains on his behalf, to seek help from any quarter; his 
partial faith in Christ's power to help — for without some faith of this 
description, he would not have come at all; yet the absence of all 
deeper faith springing from a sense of spiritual disease, which should 
have brought the man to Jesus for himself as well as for his son, and 
which should have taught him to look to Jesus as the healer of the 
soul. It was because he saw in this nobleman a specimen of his 
countrymen at large, and in his application a type and prelude of the 
multitude of like applications afterwards to be made to him. 

It may have served to suggest this the more readily to Christ's 
thoughts, and give the greater intensity to the emotion excited within 
his breast, that he had just come from Sychar, where so many had 
believed in him without any sign or wonder done, believed in him as 
a teacher sent from God, believed in him as the Messiah promised to 
their fathers. What a contrast between those simple-minded, sim- 
ple-hearted Samaritans, whose love and wonder, faith and penitence, 
joy and gratitude had been so quickly, so purely, so exclusively 
awakened, and this nobleman of Capernaum and his Galilean fellow- 
countrymen ! We know that Jesus never returned to Sychar, though 
he must more than once have passed near to it on his way to and 
from Jerusalem. We know that he gave positive instructions to the 
Seventy to go into no city of the Samaritans. It was in fulfilment of 
his design that his personal ministry should be confined to the lost 
sheep of the house of Israel, that he laid this restraint upon himseli 
and his disciples. But can we think that it cost him no self-denial, 
that it was with no inward pang that Jesus turned away from those 
who showed themselves so willing to receive, to those who were foj 



THE NOBLEMAN AND THE CENTURION. 153 

ever asking a sign from heaven, and who, "after he had done so 
many miracles, yet believed not in him" ? John 12 : 37. Why was 
it, then, that when the Pharisees came forth and began to question 
him, seeking of him a sign from heaven, " he sighed deeply in his 
spirit, and said, Why doth this generation seek after a sign ?" Mark 
8 : 12. The deep sigh came from the depth of a spirit moved and 
grieved at this incessant craving for outward seals and vouchers, this 
unwillingness to believe in him simply on the ground of his character 
and his doctrine. Though he did not meet the peculiar demand of 
the Pharisees, who, unsatisfied even with his other works, sought 
from him a special sign from heaven, our Lord, we know, was lavish 
in the performance of miracles, supplied willingly and largely that 
ground of faith which they afforded, appealed often and openly to 
the proof of his divine mission which they supplied. Yet all this is 
consistent with his deploring the necessity which required such a 
kind of evidence to be supplied, and his mourning over that state of 
the human spirit out of which the necessity arose. " The works that 
I do bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me." " If I do 
not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye 
believe not me, believe the works." John 5 : 36; 10 : 37, 38. Such 
was Christ's language, openly addressed to the rulers of the people 
at Jerusalem. Nor was it differently that he spoke to his disciples in 
private : " Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me : 
or else believe me for the very works' sake." John 14:11. Jesus 
would rather have been believed in without the works, would rather 
that he had not had the works to do in order to win the faith. It is 
not, then, a faith in the reality of miracles, nor in him simply as the 
worker of them, nor in any thing he was or said or did that rests 
exclusively upon his having performed them, which constitutes that 
deeper faith in himself to which it is his supreme desire to conduct 
us. And when we read of Jesus sighing when signs were asked, and 
sighing as miracles were wrought by him, we cannot interpret his 
sighing otherwise than as the expression of the profound grief of his 
spirit over those who are so little alive to the more spiritual evidence 
that his character and works carried along with them, as to need to 
have these outward props and buttresses supplied. There are two 
different kinds of faith — that which you put in what another is, or in 
what another has said, because of your own personal knowledge of 
him and your pei^eption of the intrinsic truthfulness of his sayings, 
and that which you cherish because of certain external vouchers for 
his truthfulness that he prints. Jesus invites us to put both these 
kinds of faith in him, but the latio. an( j tu« w«« — - ■ « - j — 



154= THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

to tlie former and the higher, the real abiding, life-giving faith in him 
as the Saviour of our souls. 

" Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe." We are 
scarcely surprised that the nobleman of Capernaum, when his eager 
entreaty was met in this way, by the utterance of so broad an aphor- 
: sm, should have felt somewhat disappointed and chagrined. Tluere 
was some hope for him indeed, had he reflected on it, in the words 
that Christ had used; for if Jesus had not meant to do this sign and 
wonder, he would not have spoken as he did. But the father is in no 
mood to take up and weigh the worth and meaning of Christ's words. 
What he wants is that Christ should go down with him immediately 
to Capernaum ; he has some hope, that if there, he may be able to 
cure his son. He has no idea of a healing wrought at a distance, 
effected at Cana by a word of the Lord's power, an act of the Lord's 
will. " Sir," he says, " come down ere my child die :" a tinge of 
impatience, perhaps of pride, yet full of the good compensatory ele- 
ment, strong paternal love. "Jesus saith unto him, Go thy way; thy 
son liveth." It is the first time, it is one of the few instances in 
which Jesus stood face to face with earthly rank and power. Per- 
haps this nobleman presumed on his position, when he said, with 
something of an imperative tone, " Sir, come down ere my child die." 
If so, he must have been not a little astonished to find the tone of 
command rolled back upon him thus: " Go thy way; thy son liveth." 
How high above the nobility of earth rises the royalty of heaven! 
This is the style and manner of Him who saith, and it is done ; who 
commandeth, and creation throughout all its borders obeys. None 
ever did such works on earth as Jesus did; none ever did them in 
such a simple, easy, unaffected manner; the manner becoming one 
who was exerting not a delegated but a native power. 

The manner and the substance of the declaration told alike at 
once upon the nobleman. It satisfied him that the end of his visit 
was gained. He believed in the word of Jesus, that the death he 
dreaded was not to come upon his son, that the child he loved so 
tenderly was to be spared to him. Exactly how this had been brought 
about he did not as yet know. Whether the cure had been instanta- 
neous and complete, or whether the crisis of it had passed and the 
recovery had begun ; whether it had been by his possession of a super- 
human knowledge or by his exercise of a superhuman powor that 
Jesus had been able to announce to him the fact, " 1'hy son liveth," 
he neither stayed, nor did he venture to ask any explanation. It was 
enough for him to be assured of the fao+> and there was something 
in the mannov i» _i,:~i~ i^b «q 4Zt/ way" had been spoken which 



fHE NOBLEMAN AND THE CENTTJBION. 155 

forbade delay. He meets his servants by the way, bearers >i glad 
tidings. With them he can use all freedom. He asks all about the 
cure, and learns that it had not been slowly, but instantaneously, 
that the fever had gone, and that the time at which it had done so 
was the very time at which these words of Jesus, "Thy child liveth,'' 
had been spoken at Cana. He had gone out to that village but hall 
a believer in Christ's power in any way to help, limiting that power so 
much in his conception that it had never once occurred to him that 
Jesus could do any thing for him unless he saw the child. But 
now he feels that he has been standing in the presence of One the 
extent of whose power he had as much underrated as the depth 
and tenderness of his love. Awe, conviction, gratitude filJ his soul. 
A double sign and wonder has been done in Israel. A tfhild has 
been cured of a fever at Capernaum by one standing miles away at 
Cana, and a father has been cured of his unbelief — the same kind of 
power that banished the disease from the body of the one banishing 
distrust from the heart of the other. 

How far above all that he had ever asked ! His child was dying 
when the father left Capernaum, was still nearer death when he 
arrived at Cana. Had Jesus done what the father wanted, and gone 
down with him to Capernaum, his son might have been dead ere they 
got there. The word of power is spoken, and just as the disease is 
clasping its victim in a last embrace, it has to relax its grasp, take 
wings, and fly away. The father has gone unselfishly, affectionately 
on an errand of love, seeking simply his child's life, not asking 
or caring to get any thing himself from Christ. But now in this 
Jesus he recognizes a higher and greater than a mere healer of the 
body. Spiritual life is breathed into his own soul. Nor is this all ; 
he returns to Capernaum to tell all the wonders of the cure ; tells them 
to the healed child, who also believes — and strange would be the 
meeting afterwards between that child and Jesus — he tells them to 
the other members of his family, and each in turn believes. He him- 
self believed, and with him all his house — the first whole household 
brought into the Christian fold. 

Let us compare for a moment this case with that of the centurion. 
Both plead for others ; the one for his child, the other for his servant, 
and the pleading of both is signally successful; the compliance prompt 
and generous. Such honor doth Jesus put on all kindly intereessior 
with him on behalf of those to whom we are bound by ties of rela- 
tionship and affection. In both the cases, too, Christ adopts the unu- 
sual method of curing at a distance, curing by a word. But the treat- 
ment of the two applicants is different — suited to the state, the char- 



156 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

acter, the necessities of each. The one's faith is limited and weak, 
and needs to be expanded and strengthened; the other's is strong, 
and waits only to be exhibited in combination with that humility 
which covers it as with a crown of glory. The one man, little know- 
ing what Christ can do for him, and impatient at what looks like a 
repulse, says in his haste, " Sir, come down ere my child die." The 
other, having a boundless faith in Jesus, ventures not at first to pre- 
scribe any special mode of cure, but contents himself with sending 
some elders of the Jews to ask that Christ's healing power should be 
exercised on behalf of his servant. Jesus goes not with him who 
asks him to do so, having a far greater thing to do for him than to 
comply with his request. But he no sooner gets the message deliv- 
ered by deputy from the other, than he says, " I will come and heal 
him," and sets off instantly on the errand. But he knew that he 
should be arrested by the way. He knew that the Boman centurion 
had such a sense of his own unworthiness that he shrank from receiv- 
ing him into his house ; he knew that he had such confidence in his 
power that all he wanted was that Jesus should will it, and his ser- 
vant should be cured. He knew that there was a humility and a faith 
in the breast of this Gentile officer — the first Gentile that ever applied 
to him — such as was not to be found in any Israelitish bosom. It 
was to bring these before the eyes of his fellow-countrymen, and to 
hold them up for admiration and rebuke, that he did not at the first 
act as he had done at Cana, but made that movement towards the 
centurion's dwelling. Wonderful, indeed, the faith embodied in the 
message which the centurion sent : ' I, a Roman officer, have a lim- 
ited authority, but within its limits this authority is supreme. I can 
say unto one of my soldiers, Go, and he goeth; to another, Come, 
and he cometh ; to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it. But thou, 
Jesus, art supreme over all. As my soldiers are under me, so under 
thee are all the powers and processes of nature. Thou canst say to 
this disease, Come, and it cometh ; to that other disease, Go, and it 
goeth ; to thy servants Life and Death, Do this, and they do it. Say 
thou then but the word, and my servant shall be healed.' And Jesus 
marvelled when he heard the message, and he turned about and said 
to the people that followed him — it was very much for their sakes 
that he had arranged it so, that so many peculiarities should attend 
this miracle, and such a preeminence be given to this first exhibition 
of Gentile faith in him — " I say unto you, I have not found so great, 
faith, no not in Israel." It was the highest exercise of human faith 
in him that Jesus had yet met with, and he wondered and rejoiced 
that it should be found beyond the bounds of Israel. Midway be- 



THE POOL OF BETHESDA. 167 

fcween the Gentile and the Jew stood the woman of Samaria ; outside 
the bounds of Judaism stood this Roman centurion. Was it to pre- 
figure the great future of the gathering in of all people and nations 
and tongues and tribes that so early in his ministry such a manifesta- 
tion of faith in the Saviour was made ? 

But while wondering with Christ at the beautiful exhibition oi 
humility and faith in a quarter so unlooked-for, let us take home the 
warning with which Jesus followed up the expression of his approval 
and admiration : "And I say unto you, that many shall come from 
the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and 
Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven ; but the children of the kingdom 
shall be cast into outer darkness, there shall be wailing and gnash- 
ing of teeth." Surely from the lips of the living and compassionate 
Redeemer words of such terrible import never would have passed, 
had the warning they convey not been needed. Let it then be the 
first and most earnest effort of each of us to enter into this kingdom, 
of which nominally and by profession we are the children, in all 
humility, and with entire trust in Christ our Saviour, lest the oppor- 
tunity for entering in go past, and the door be shut — shut by him 
who shutteth, and no man openeth. 



XVI. 

The Pool of Bethesda.* 

Could we ascertain what the feast was to which Jesus went up, 
and at which he healed the man beside the pool of Bethesda, it 
would go far to settle the question as to the length of our Lord's 
public ministry ; but after all the labor that has been bestowed on 
the investigation, it remains still uncertain whether it was the Pass- 
over, or one of the other annual festivals. If it was the Passover — 
as, upon the whole, we incline to think it was, as John mentions 
three other Passovers, one occurring before, and two after this one — 
Christ's ministry would come to be regarded as covering a space oi 
about three years and a half ; if it were one or other of the lesser 
festivals, a year or more, according to the festival which is fixed upon, 
must be deducted from that period. This much, at least, appears 
certain, that it was our Lord's second appearance in Jerusalem after 
his baptism, and that it occurred at or near the close of a year, the 
most of which had been spent in Judea. On the occasion of this 

* John- 5. 



158 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

second visit, Jesus went one Sabbath-day to walk through the clois- 
ters or colonnades that were built round a large swimming bath, 
called the pool of Bethesda. Tradition has for many ages pointed to 
a large excavation, 360 feet long, 130 feet broad, and 75 feet deep, 
lying outside the north wall of the Harem enclosure, and near to St. 
Stephen's gate, as having been this pool. The peculiar character of 
its masonry establishes the fact that it must have been intended ori- 
ginally as a reservoir for water. At one of its corners there are two 
arched openings or vaults, one twelve, the other nineteen feet wide, 
extending backward to an unknown distance, forming part, it may 
have been, of the porches of which the evangelist speaks. These 
porches, on the day on which Jesus visited them, were crowded. 
They formed one of the city resorts ; and, besides numbers of others 
that frequented them for the ordinary use of the waters, there lay 
around a great multitude of the blind, the halt, and the withered, 
waiting for the moving of the water. 

If we accept the account given in the fourth verse of the fifth 
chapter, the moving of the water, and the healing virtue temporarily 
bestowed upon it during the period of its commotion, were due to 
angelic agency. The verse, however, is wanting in many of the 
most ancient manuscripts, and has come now to be very generally 
regarded as an interpolation very naturally inserted by the early 
transcribers of the gospel, as embodying the expression of what was 
then the popular belief. We are disposed the rather to concur in 
this view, when we consider how unlike to angelic influence is the 
kind of agency here attributed to it as elsewhere described in Holy 
"Writ, and how singular it would have been had the healing power 
been so bestowed that it should be restricted to the single person 
who first stepped in. Of itself this would not be sufficient ground on 
which to reject the idea of a supernatural agency having been em- 
ployed, but if the verse alluded to did not form part of the original 
writing of the evangelist, then we are left at fiber ty to believe that 
this was a pool supplied by an intermittent spring, which at certain 
seasons, owing to the sudden formation of particular gases, bubbled 
up, throwing the whole water of the reservoir into commotion, im- 
pregnated for the time with qualities which had a healing power over 
some forms of disease — a power of course greatly magnified in the 
popular idea. But whether the verse, and the explanation which it 
contains of the moving of the water, be accepted or rejected, the nar- 
rative of what Jesus said and did remains untouched. 

Wandering through these crowded porches, and looking at the 
strange arrav of the diseased waiting there for the auspicious moment, 






THE POOL OF BETHESDA. 159 

the eye of Jesus rests on one who wears a dejected and despairing 
look, as if he had given up all hope. Thirty-eight years before, tho 
powers of life and motion had been so enfeebled that it was with the 
greatest difficulty, and at the slowest pace, he could creep along the 
ground. His friends had got tired perhaps of helping him otherwise, 
and as their last resource, had carried him to the porches of the pool, 
and left him there to do the best for himself he could. And he 
had done that best often and often, yet had failed. Every time the 
troubling of the water came, he had made the effort ; but every time 
he had seen some one of more vigor and alertness, or better helped, 
get in before him, and snatch the benefit out of his hands. Jesus 
knew all this : knew how long it had been since the paralytic stroke 
first fell on him ; how long it was since he had been brought to try 
the efficacy of these waters ; how the expectation of cure, at first full 
and bright, had been gradually fading from his heart. To rekindle 
the dying hope, to fix the man's attention on himself, Jesus bends 
over the bed on which he lies, looks down at him, and says, " Wilt 
thou be made whole?" Were the words spoken in mockery? That 
could not be ; a glance at the speaker was sufficient to disprove it. 
But the question surely would not have been asked had the speaker 
known how helpless was he to whom it was addressed. He said, " I 
have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool, 
but while I am coming another steppeth down before me." As he 
gives this explanation, he looks up more earnestly into the stranger's 
face — a face he had never seen before — and gathers a new life and 
hope from the expression of sympathy, the look of power that coun- 
tenance conveys. 

" Jesus saith unto him, Eise, take up thy bed, and walk." The 
command was instantly obeyed. The cure was instantly complete. 
The short time, however, that it had taken for him to stoop and lift 
the mattress on which he lay, had been sufficient for Jesus to pass 
on, and be lost among the crowd. The stopping, the question, the 
command, the cure, all had been so sudden, the man has been so 
taken by surprise, that he doubts whether he would be able to recog- 
nise that stranger if he saw him again. Lifting his bed, and rejoi- 
cing in the new sensation of recovered strength, he walks through the 
city streets in search of his old home and friends. The Jews — an 
expression by which, in his gospel, John always means, not the gene- 
ral community, but some of the ecclesiastical heads and rulers of the 
people -the Jews see him as he walks, and say to him: "It is the 
Sabbath-day; it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed." No answer 
could be more natural, as no excuse could be more valid, than that 



160 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

which the man gave when he said : " He that made me whole, the 
same said unto me, Take up thy bed and walk." His challengers do 
not ask him any thing about the healing — as soon as they hear of it, 
fchey suspect who the healer v, as — but fixing upon the act in which 
the breach of the Sabbath lay, and as if admitting the validity of the 
man's defence, in throwing the responsibility of that act upon him 
who had ordered him to do it, " They asked him, What man is that 
which said unto thee, Take up thy bed and walk?" He could not 
tell, and so the conversation by the wayside dropped. 

Soon after, the healed man is in the temple, thanking God, let us 
believe, for the great mercy bestowed upon him. Jesus, too, is there ; 
but they might have passed without the healed recognising the healer. 
It was not the purpose, however, of our Lord that it should be so. 
Finding the man among the worshippers, he says to him, "Sin no 
more, lest a worse thing come unto thee." Nothing more seems to 
have been said ; nothing more to have passed between the two ; but 
fchat short sentence, what a light it threw upon the distant past ! 
reminding the man that it had been to the sins of his youth that he 
had owed the eight-and-thirty years* of infirmity that had follow- 
ed; and what a solemn warning did they carry as to the future — re- 
minding him that if, on being restored to strength, he should return 
to sin, a still worse thing than so many years of bodily infirmity 
might be in store for him. Jesus gives this warning, and passes on. 
Recognising him at once as he who had cured him beside the pool, the 
man inquires about him of the bystanders, and learns now who he is. 
And he goes and tells the Jews ; not, let us hope, from any malicious 
motive, or any desire to put an instrument into the hands of Christ's 
enemies. Considering where and how he had so long been lying, he 
may have known so little of all that had recently happened, as to 
imagine that he was at once pleasing the rulers, and doing a service 
to Jesus, by informing them about his cure. But it was no new intel- 
ligence that he conveyed. The Jews, we presume, knew well enough 
who had effected this cure. But it was the first instance in which 
fchey had heard of Jesus' healing on the Sabbath-day — of itself in 
then- eyes a violation of its sanctity ; and as it would appear that, not 
content with this offence, he had added another in ordering the man 
to carry on that day a burden through the streets — a thing strictly 
and literally prohibited by the law — it may have gratified the Jews 
to be able to convict Jesus of a double breach of the Sabbath law by 
direct and indubitable evidence from the man's own lips. You can 
imagine the secret though malignant satisfaction with which they got 
and grasped this weapon, one at once of defence and of assault ; how 



THE POOL OF BETHESDA. 161 

they would use it in vindicating their rejection of Christ as a teacher 
sent from God; for could God send a man who would be guilty of 
such flagrant breaclies of his law? how they would use it in carrying 
out those purposes of persecution already brooding in their breasts. 
Their hostility to Jesus, which had been deepening ever since his 
daring act of cleansing the temple, now reached its height. From 
this time forth — and it deserves to be especially noted as having occur- 
red at so early a stage, inasmuch as it forms the key to much of our 
Lord's subsequent conduct — they sought to slay him, because he had 
done those things on the Sabbath-day. But though the purpose to 
slay him was formed, it was not expressed, nor attempted to be ear- 
ned out. Things were not yet ripe for its execution. Jesus might 
be convicted as a Sabbath-breaker, and all the opprobrium of such a 
conviction be heaped upon his head; but as things then stood, it 
would not be possible to have the penalty of death inflicted on him 
upon that ground. They must wait and watch for an opportunity of 
accusing him of some crime which will carry that penalty even in the 
eyes of a Roman judge. 

Though not serving them much in this respect, they have not to 
wait long till, in their very presence — so that they have no need to 
ask for other proof — Jesus commits a still higher offence than that of 
violating the Sabbath. Aware of the charges that they were bring- 
ing against him as to his conduct at the pool of Bethesda, he seizes 
upon some public opportunity when he could openly address the 
rulers ; and in answer to the special accusation of having broken the 
Sabbath, he says to them, '"My Father worketh hitherto, and I 
work." The rest into which my Father entered after his work of 
creation, of which your earthly Sabbath rest is but a type, was not 
one of absolute inactivity — of the suspension, cessation of his agency 
in and over the vast creation he had formed. He worketh on still ; 
worketh on continuously, without distinction of days, through the 
Sabbath-day as through all days, sustaining, preserving, renewing, 
vivifying, healing. Were this work divine to cease, there would not 
be even that earthly Sabbath for you to rest in. And as he, my 
Father, worketh, so work I, his Son, knowing as little of distinction 
of days in my working as he. By process of nature, as you call it — 
that is, by the hand of my Father — a man is often cured on the Sab- 
bath-day. And it is only what he thus does that I have done, and 
aiy authority for doing so is this, that I am his Son.' 

Whatever difficulty the men to whom this defence of his alleged 
Sabbath-breaking was offered, may have had either in understanding 
its nature or appreciating its force, one thing is clear, that they did 

Ul« of I'lul.l. JJ 



162 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

at once and most clearly comprehend that in speaking of God as his 
Father in the way he did, Jesus was claiming to stand to God, not 
simply in the relationship of a child — such a relationship as that in 
which we all, as the creatures of his power and the preserved of his 
providence, may be regarded as standing — but in that of a close, per- 
sonal, peculiar sonship belonging to him alone, involving in it, as all 
true filiation does, unity of nature between the Father and the Son. 
It was thus that the Jews understood Jesus to speak of the Father 
and of himself, when he so associated himself with the Father, as to 
imply that if his Father was not a breaker of the Sabbath in healing 
men upon that day, neither was he, his Son ; and so they sought 
the more to kill him, because he had not only broken the Sabbath, 
but said also that God was his own Father, making himself equal 
with God. 

If the Jews had misunderstood Jesus, what was easier than 
for him to have said so ; to have denied and repudiated the allega- 
tion that he had intended to claim any thing like equality with God? 
Instead of this, what does Jesus do? He goes on to reassert, to ex- 
plain, and to expand what had been implied in the compendious ex- 
pression he had employed. Any thing like such distinction between 
the Father and the Son as that the one would or could judge, or will, 
or act independently of the other — without or against the other — he 
emphatically and reiterateclly repudiates: "Verily, verily, I say unto 
you, the Son can do nothing of himself;" "I can of my own self do 
nothing." The very nature of the relationship forbade it that the 
Son ever would or could assert for himself any such independence of 
the Father as the .creature, in its wilfulness and sinfulness, is apt to 
assert for himself. But though all such separation and indepen- 
dence of council and of action is here precluded, so complete is the 
concert that what things soever the Father doeth the same doeth 
the Son likewise. Some things that the great Divine Master Work- 
man does, a superior scholar may copy or imitate. But Jesus does 
not say, what things the Father does, the Son does other things 
somewhat like them ; but the same things, and whatever things the 
Father doeth, the same doeth the Son, and doeth them likewise, that 
is, in the very same manner, by the exercise of the same powei , for 
the furtherance of the same ends. 

In far greater works than that simply of healing, will the unity ci 
action between them be made to appear. One of these greater woi ks 
is that of quickening the dead, by the incommunicable prerogative 
of the Creator. This prerogative the Father and the Son have equal- 
ly. As he wills, and by his will, the Father quickeneth; so too does 






THE POOL OF BETHESDA. 163 

the Son. The highest form of life is that which is breathed into 
souls spiritually dead. This life is of the Son's imparting equally 
as of the Father's. It comes through the hearing of Christ's word ; 
through a believing in the Father as he who sent the Son. Verily, 
verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the 
dead — the spiritually dead — shall hear the voice of the Son of God, 
and they that hear shall live. Another work peculiar to divinity is 
that of judging ; approving, condemning, assigning to every man at 
last, in strict accordance with what he is, and has been, and has done, 
his place and destiny. Who but the all- wise, all-just, all -gracious 
God is competent for such a task? but that task, in the outward 
execution of it, the Father has devolved upon the Son, giving him 
authority to execute it, because he is not simply the Son of God, in 
which character he needs not such authority to be conveyed to him ; 
but because he is also the Son of man, and it is in that complex or 
mediatorial office with which he is invested, that he is to sit upon the 
Throne of Judgment at the last, when all the inhabitants of the earth 
shall stand before his tribunal. Should this then be a subject for 
marvel? for the hour was coming, though not yet come, when all that 
are in their graves shall hear Christ's voice and shall come forth ; they 
that have done good to the resurrection of life, and they that have done 
avil to the resurrection of condemnation. Having thus unfolded the 
great truth of the unity of will, purpose, and action, between the Fath- 
er and the Son, Jesus ceases to speak of himself in the third person, 
and proceeds onward to the close of his address, to speak in the first 
person, and that in the plainest way,* of the testimonies that had been 

* "I can of mine own self do nothing : as I hear I judge : and my judgment 
is just ; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath 
sent me. If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. There is another 
that beareth witness of me ; and I know that the witness which he witnesseth of 
me is true. Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness unto the truth. But I re- 
ceive not testimony from man : but these things I say, that ye might be saved. 
He was a burning and a shining light ; and ye were willing for a season to re- 
joice in his light. But I have greater witness than that of John : for the works 
which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear wit- 
ness of me, that the Father hath sent me. And the Father himself, which hath 
sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any 
time* nor seen his shape. And ye have not his word abiding in you : for whom 
he hath sent, him ye believe not. Search the Scriptures ; for in them ye think 
ye have eternal life : and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not 
eome to me, that ye might have life. I receive not honor from men. But I 
know you, that ye have not the love of God in you. I am come in my Father's 
name, and ye receive me not : if another shall come in his own name, him ye 
will receive. How can ye believe, which receive honor one of another, and seek 



164 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

borne to him, that of the Father, that of John, that of his own work^ 
that of the Holy Scriptures, all of which these Jews had wilfully re- 
jected. Now the accused becomes the accuser. Now he who had been 
charged as a Sabbath-breaker, rises to the height of that very eleva- 
tion which they had regarded him as a profane and blasphemous man 
for venturing to claim; and he tells these unbelieving Jews, as one 
knowing the hearts of all men, and entitled to judge, and exercising 
that very authority with which, as the Son of man, he had been clothed, 
he tells them, that they had not the love of God in them, nor his 
word abiding in them ; that they did not believe Moses when he wrote 
of Him ; that, much as they reverenced their Scriptures, they only 
believed in them so far as they tallied with their own thoughts and 
fancies. Still further, he declares that there was this great obstacle 
in the way of their receiving one who came to them as Jesus did, in 
the name of the Father, to do alone the Father's will, that they were 
all too busy seeking after the honor that came from man, minding 
earthly things, and seeking not the honor that came from the one only 
living and true God ; attributing thus all their perverseness to moral 
causes, to motives operating within, over which they should have had 
control ; this being their condemnation, that they would not come to 
him that they might have life. He would, but they would not. 

If Jesus Christ were but a man, what are we to make of such a 
discourse as this ? What are we to make of the first part of it, in 
which he speaks of the Father and his connection with him ? What 
of the second part of it, in which he speaks to the Jews and of their 
treatment of him? We know not which would be the worst — the 
arrogance in the one direction, or the presumption and uncharitable- 
ness in the other — if this were but a man speaking of the Creator, 
and to his fellows. It can alone relieve him from the guilt of profane 
assumption towards God, and unlicensed liberty with man, to believe 
that Jesus was really that which the Jews regarded him as claiming 
to be, the Son of, the equal with the Father, whom all men should 
honor, even as they honor God. 

But let me ask now your particular attention to the circumstances 
under which this marvellous discourse was spoken, and to the object 
which, in the first instance, as at first delivered, it was intended to 
serve. Jesus voluntarily, intentionally created the occasion for its 
delivery. The miracle here — the healing of the impotent man at the 

not the honor that cometh from God only ? Do not think that I "will accuse you 
to the Father : there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. 
For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me : for he wrote o< ma 
But if yo believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words ?" 



THE POOL OF BETHESDA. 166 

pool of Bethesda — was a wholly secondary or subordinate matter, 
intended to bring Christ into that relationship with the Jewish rulers 
which called for and gave its fitness and point to this address. Why 
did Jesus choose a Sabbath-day to walk in the porches of Bethesda? 
Why did he do what only on one or two occasions afterwards he did, 
instead of waiting to be applied to, himself single out the man and 
volunteer to heal him ? Why did he not simply cure the man, but 
bid him also take up his bed and walk? He might have chosen 
another day, and then, in the story of the cure, we should have had 
but another instance added to the many of the exertion of our Lord's 
divine and beneficent power. He might have simply told the man to 
rise up and walk, and none could have told how the cure had been 
effected, or turned it into any charge. He chose that day, and he 
selected that man, and he laid on him the command he did, for the 
very purpose of bringing himself front to front with the Jewish 
rulers. At first the question between thero seems to refer only to the 
right keeping of the Sabbath. Had Jesus as a man, as a Jew, bro- 
ken the Sabbath law in curing a man upon that day ? Had he bro- 
ken it in telling the man he healed to carry his bed through the city? 
Had the Jews not misunderstood, overstrained the law, sticking to 
its letter, and violating its spirit ? These were grave questions, with 
which, as we shall find, Jesus afterwards did deal, when on another 
Sabbath he volunteered another cure. But here Christ waives all 
lesser topics — that, among the rest, of the right interpretation of the 
Sabbath law —and uses the antecedent circumstances as the basis on 
which to assert, and then amplify and defend, the truth of his true 
and only sonship to the Father. His ministry in Judea was now 
about to close. Aware of the design against his life which had now 
been formed, and wishing to baffle it for a season, he retires to Gali- 
lee. But he will not leave Jerusalem till he has given one full and 
public testimony as to who and what he is, so that the Jews in con- 
tinuing to reject him, shall not have it in their power to say that he 
has not revealed his own character, nor expressed to them the real 
grounds upon which their opposition to him is based. 

Such was the special drift and bearing of the address of Jesus as 
originally delivered to the Jews. But is there nothing in its close 
applicable to ourselves and to all men in every age ? The same kind 
of obstacles that raised such a barrier in the way of the Jews believ- 
ing in Jesus, do they not still exist? If the spirit of pride and world- 
liness, a conventional piety and an extreme thirst for the applause 
and honor that cometh from man, occupy and engross our hearts, 
will they not indispose and render us unable to believe simply, heart- 



166 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

ily, devotedly on Jesus Christ ? Of one thing let us be assured, thai 
whatever be our disposition and conduct towards him, his towards us 
is ever a longing desire to have us, keep us, bless us, save us; and 
that the one and only thing that stands in the way of our enjoying 
all the benefits of his salvation, is our own unwillingness ; his lament 
over all that wander away from him being ever this, " Ye will not 
come to me, that ye might have life." 



xvn. 

The Synagogue of Nazareth.* 

In the route commonly taken from Jerusalem to the sea of Gali- 
lee, one of the most interesting day's travel is that which carries you 
from Jenin across the three valleys into which, at its upper extrem- 
ity, the great plain of Esdraelon divides, and up to Nazareth, as it 
lies embedded in the southern ridge of the hills of Galilee. Cross- 
ing the first valley, we skirted the base of the mountains of Gilboa, 
and paused for a few moments upon a gentle elevation, now occupied 
by a few houses of the humblest description, on which Jezreel, the 
ancient capital of Israel, once stood, with the palace of Ahab in its 
circuit, and the vineyard of Naboth hard by. Our eye wandered 
along the twelve or fourteen miles of dead-level that run from Jez- 
reel to Carmel, and the figure of the great prophet running before 
the king's chariot rose before us. "We turned round and gazed upon 
the slopes of Gilboa, and the tide of Saul's last battle seemed to roll 
over them, and the sounds of the funeral dirge of David to be linger- 
ing still among the hills. The crossing of the next valley carried us 
to the base of Little Hermon, where a small hamlet lies, consisting 
of a few miserable-looking hovels, surrounded by ill-kept gardens. 
This was the Shunem in which the house once stood which had in it 
the prophet's chamber; and these were the gardens in one of which 
his kind hostess* son sickened unto death. Leaving behind us the 
place which, in the old prophetic times, saw the dead child given 
back to his mother, climbing Little Hermon and descending on the 
other side, we entered another village which witnessed another dead 
son given back to another bereaved mother, by Him who touched the 
bier, and said, " Young man, I say unto thee, arise." Here, in this 
village of Nain, we came for the first time on the traces of our Lord's 
Galilean ministry. The third plain passed, a steep ascent earned us 

* Luke 4 : 16-31. 



THE SYNAGOGUE OF NAZARETH. 167 

to the summit of that range of hills which forms the northeastern 
boundary of the plain of Esdraelon. Descending, we came upon a 
circular, basin-shaped depression, girdled all round by a dozen or 
more swelling hill-tops that rise from three to four hundred feet 
above the yalley they enclose. Near to the foot of the highest of 
these surrounding hills, nestled in a secluded upland hollow, lies the 
village of Nazareth. No village in Palestine is more like what it was 
in the days of Jesus Christ, and none more fitting to have been his 
residence during the greater part of his life on earth. The seclusion 
is perfect, greater even than that of Bethany, which on one side looks 
out openly upon the country that stretches away to the shore of the 
Dead sea. Nazareth is closed in on every side, offering to us an 
emblem of the seclusion of those thirty years which were passed there 
so quietly. Pure hill-breezes play over the village, and temper the 
summer heat. The soil around is rich, and yields the fairest flowers 
and richest fruits of Palestine. You seem shut out from the world, 
and yet you have but to climb a few hundred feet to the top of the 
overlooking hill, and one of the widest, finest prospects in all the 
Holy Land bursts upon your view. Away in the west, a sparkling 
light plays upon the waters of the Mediterranean, revealing a portion 
of the Great Sea that formed the highway to the isles of the Gentiles. 
The ridge of Carmel runs out into the waters, closing in the bold 
promontory on the side of which Elijah stood and discomfited the 
prophets of Baal. Southward, below your feet, stretches the great 
battle-plain of Palestine, behind which rises 'the hilly district of 
Samaria, through the opening between which and the mountains of 
Gilboa the eye wanders away eastward across the whole breadth of 
the Holy Land, till it rests upon that range, the everlasting eastern 
background of every Syrian prospect — the mountain range of Bashan 
and Gilead and Moab. Turning northward, the whole hill-country 
of Galilee lies spread out before us, the sea of Gennesaret hidden, 
but a glimpse of Safed obtained, the city set upon a hill, above and 
beyond which there rise the snowy heights of Hermon, called by the 
Arabs the Sheikh of the Mountains. 

Up to the hill-top which commands this magnificent prospect, 
how often in childhood, youth, and early manhood must Jesus have 
ascended, to gaze — who shall tell us with what thoughts ? — upon the 
chosen scene of his earthly ministry, and upon that sea over whose 
waters the glad tidings of salvation were to be borne to so many 
Jands. It pleases us to think that so many years of our Lord's life 
were spent in such a home as that which Nazareth supplied ; one so 
retired, so rich in natural beauty, with glimpses of the wide world 



168 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

around for the morning or evening hours. There it was, in the fields 
below the village, that he had watched how the lilies grew, and seen 
with what a gorgeous dress, in coloring above that of kingly purple, 
their Creator clothed them. There, in the gardens, he had noticed 
how the smallest of all seeds grew into the tallest of herbs. There, 
outside the house, he had seen two women grinding at one mill; 
inside, a woman hiding the leaven in the dough. There, in the mar- 
ket-place, he had seen the five sparrows sold for the two farthings. 
The sheep-walks of the hills and the vineyards of the valleys had 
taught him what were the offices of the good shepherd and the care- 
ful vine-dresser; and all the observations of those thirty years were 
treasured up to be drawn upon in due time, and turned into the 
lessons by which the world was to be taught wisdom. 

No means are left for ascertaining what impression was made 
during these thirty years upon the inmates of his home, the play- 
mates of his boyhood, the associates of his youth, the villagers 
generally in the midst of whom he grew up. It may readily be believed 
that the gentleness, the truthfulness, the lovingness displayed by him, 
must have won respect. Yet we can imagine, too, that the unearthly 
purity and sanctity of such a childhood and such a manhood may have 
created an awe, a sense of distance and separation, which in meaner 
spirits might deepen into something like aversion and dislike. At 
last he leaves them, and is not seen in Nazareth for many months. 
But the strangest tidings about him are afloat through the village. 
First, they hear of what happened at his baptism in the Jordan, then 
of what he did a few miles off at Cana, then of his miracles in Jeru- 
salem, then of his curing the nobleman's son of Capernaum ; and now 
he is once more among them, and the whole village is moved. The 
Sabbath-day comes round. He had been in the habit all through 
these thirty years of attending in the synagogue; sitting there quietly 
and unobtrusively, taking part in the prayers and praises, listening 
to the reading of the law and of the prophets, and to the explanations 
of the passages which were read, with what kind and amount of self- 
application none of all around him knew. But how will he comport 
himself in the new character that he has assumed? The synagogue 
is crowded with men among whom he has been brought up, all curi- 
ous to see and hear. The earlier part of the service goes ol as usual. 
The opening prayer is recited ; the opening psalm is chanted ; the 
portion from the law, from the book of Moses, is read by the ordina 
ry minister ; the time has come for the second reading — that of some 
portion of the prophets — when Jesus steps forth and stands in the 
reader's place There is no challenging of his right to do so. It w 



THE SYNAGOGUE OF NAZAEETH. 169 

not a right belonging exclusively to priest or Levite ; any Jew of any 
tribe might exercise it. But there was a functionary in every syna- 
gogue regularly appointed to the office. This functionary, in this 
instance, at once gives way, and hands to Jesus the roll of the prophet 
out of which, according to the calendar, the reading for the day is to 
be taken. It is the roll of the prophet Isaiah. Jesus opens it, and 
whether it was that the opening verses of the sixty-first chapter were 
those actually appointed for that day's service, or whether it was that 
the roll opened at random and these verses were the first that pre- 
sented themselves, or that Jesus, from the whole book, purposely 
selected the passage, he read as follows : " The Spirit of the Lord is 
upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the 
poor ; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliver- 
ance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at 
liberty them that are bruised; to preach the acceptable year of the 
Lord." And stopping there, in the middle of the sentence, he closed 
the book, gave it to the minister, and sat down upon the raised seat 
of the reader, taking the attitude usually assumed by Jewish teachers. 
There was a breathless stillness. The eyes of all that were in the 
synagogue were fastened on him. "This day," said Jesus, "is this 
Scripture fulfilled in your ears." 

It was a Scripture universally understood to be descriptive of the 
coming Messiah, his office, and his work. Jesus gives no reason for 
appropriating and applying it to himself; he offers nothing in the 
shape of argument or evidence in favor of his being indeed the 
Christ, the Anointed of the Holy Ghost. He contents himself with 
the simple authoritative assertion of the fact. We have indeed but 
the first sentence given that he spoke on this occasion. What fol- 
lowed, however, we may well believe to have been an exposition of 
the passage read, as containing an account of the true character, 
ends, and objects of his mission as the Christ of God; the telling 
who the poor were to whom he brought good tidings, who the bruised 
and the broken-hearted were whom he came to heal, who the bound 
were that he came to liberate, who the blind whose eyes he came to 
open, what that year was he came to usher in — the long year of 
grace which still runs on, in the course of which there is acceptance 
for all of us with God, through Christ. As Jesus spake of these 
things — spake with such ease, such grace, such dignity —the first 
impression made upon the Nazarenes, his old familiar friends, was 
that of astonishment and admiration. He had got no other, no better 
education than that which the poorest of them had received. He 
had attended none of the higher schools in anv of the larger towns. 



170 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

had sat at the feet of none of then- chief rabbis to be instructed in 
the law; vet no rabbi of the schools could speak with greater fluen- 
cy, greater authority, greater confidence. Soon, however, as from 
the mere manner, they began to turn their thoughts to the substance 
of this discourse, and began to realize what the position really was 
which Jesus was assuming — that it was nothing short of the very 
highest that ever any son of man was to reach; that it was as the 
Lord's anointed Christ that he was speaking, and speaking to them 
as the poor, the blind, the captives, to whom he was to render such 
services — the admiration turns into envy. Who is he that is arroga- 
ting to himself all this dignity, authority, and power? who is speak- 
ing to them as so immeasurably his inferiors, as needing so much his 
help? Is not this the son of honest, plain, old Joseph, whom we all 
so well remember as our village carpenter? His brethren and his 
sisters, are they not here beside us in the synagogue, listening, appa- 
rently with no great delight or approval, to this new strain in which 
their brother has begun to speak? He the Messiah, the opener of 
our eyes, the healer of our hearts, our deliverer from bondage ! Be- 
fore he asks us to believe any such thing of him, let him show us 
some sign from heaven ; do some of those miracles that they say he 
has done elsewhere, particularly at Capernaum. If he wanted us, 
who have all known him so well from his childhood, to believe in him 
as a prophet, he should have come to us first, convinced us first, 
unfolded his credentials to us first, wrought his first miracles here in 
Nazareth. Jealousy heightens the offence that envy had created, and 
ere long the whole company in that synagogue is looking at him 
askance. Jesus sees this, and turning from his former subject of dis- 
course, tells them that he sees and knows it, lays open their hearts to 
them, puts the very words into their lips that they were ready to 
utter, and proceeds to vindicate himself for not showing any special 
sign to his fellow-townsmen, by quoting two instances in which Elijah 
and Elisha, the two great workers of miracles among the prophets, 
passed over all their feUow-countrymen to show favor to the Sidonian 
widow and the Syrian officer. There is nothing that men dislike 
more than that the evil and the bitter things hidden in their breasts 
should be brought to light. It aggravates this dislike when the dis- 
coverer and revealer of their thoughts is the very person against 
whom the malignant sentiment is cherished. Should he remain calm 
and uninrpassionecl, neither taken by surprise, nor betraying irrita- 
tion, they are so much the more incensed. So felt the Xazarenes 
under the address of our Lord; and when he proceeded to assume 
the mantle of EHiah and Elisha, as if he were of the same order with 



THE SYNAGOGUE OF NAZAEETH. 171 

these great prophets of the olden time, it is more than they can any 
longer bear. They will be lectured no more in such a way by the son 
of the carpenter. They rise, they rush upon him, they thrust him 
out of the Tillage, and on to the brow *>f a precipice over which they 
would have hurled him ; but it pleased him to put forth that power ; 
anl to lay upon them that spell which he laid upon the high priest's 
band in the garden of Gethsemane. They are hurrying him to the 
brow of the hill ; he turns, he looks, the spell is on them, their hands 
drop powerless by their sides ; he passes through the midst of them, 
they offer no resistance, and before they recover themselves he is gone. 
About two miles from Nazareth there is a hill which shows, upon 
the side facing the plain of Esdraelon, a long and steep descent. The 
monks of the middle ages — the determiners of most of the sites of the 
holy places in Palestine — fixed on this as the precipice over which 
the angry Nazarenes designed to throw our Saviour, and gave it the 
name of the Mount of Precipitation. The very distance of this mount 
from the village goes far to disprove the tradition regarding it. But 
though this distance had been less, it could not have been the place, 
for it is distinctly stated by the evangelist that it was a brow of the 
hill on which the city was built from which they intended to cast 
him. Modern travellers are all agreed that it must have been from 
some part of the rocky cliff which overhangs the oldest quarter of the 
present village of Nazareth that Jesus was about to have been thrown. 
This rocky cliff extends for some distance along the hill on which 
Nazareth is built, and shows at different points perpendicular descents 
of from thirty to forty feet, which, as they have been filled up below 
with accumulations of rubbish, must originally have been much deeper. 
Any one of these would so far answer to the description given by the 
evangelist. In taking this view, however, it is necessary to suppose 
that on leaving the synagogue, with the deliberate intention of killing 
him, the infuriated Nazarenes either forced Jesus up the height from 
which they designed afterwards to cast him, or made a circuit up and 
round the hill, in order to reach the intended spot. The same ascent 
which it must have been needful thus to make I made, in company 
with Kev. Mr. Zeller, who for some years has been resident as a mis- 
sionary in Nazareth. On getting to the top of the ridge, we found 
ourselves on a nearly level plateau of considerable extent. There 
were no houses on this plateau, but Mr. Zeller pointed out to us here 
and there those underground cisterns which are the almost infallible 
signs of houses having once been in the neighborhood. Here, then, 
on this plateau, a portion if not the whole of the ancient Nazareth 
may have stood. If it was so — if even a few houses of the old vil- 



i72 THE LIFE OF OHEIST 

lage were here — then, as we know it to have been the rule that, wher- 
ever it was possible, the synagogue was built on the highest ground 
in or near the city or village to which it belonged, it must have been 
on this elevated ground that the synagogue of Nazareth stood, not 
far from the brow of the hill. It seems more likely that the Naza- 
renes should, in the frenzy of the moment, have attempted to throw 
our Lord from a precipice quite at hand than that, acting on a delib- 
erate purpose, they should have spent some time, and climbed a hill 
in order to its execution. 

But turning now from the locality and outward circumstances of 
this event in our Saviour's life, let us try to enter into its meaning 
and spirit. So far as we know, this was the first occasion on whicb 
Jesus addressed an audience of his countrymen in the synagogue on 
the Sabbath-day ; it would appear indeed to have been the only one 
on which he took the duty of the reader as well as that of the exhorter. 
It was a common enough thing for any one, even a stranger, to be 
asked, when the proper service of the synagogue was over, to address 
some words of instruction or encouragement to the audience. The 
gospels tell us how frequently Jesus made use of this opportunity ; 
and you may remember how at Antioch and Pisidia, after the read- 
ing of the law and the prophets, the rulers of the synagogue sent unto 
Paul and Barnabas saying, " Men and brethren, if ye have any word 
of exhortation for the people, say on." The peculiarity of the inci- 
dent now before us lay in this, that Jesus first read the passage from 
the prophets, and then grounded directly upon it the address which 
he delivered. In this respect we might regard it as the first sermon 
ever preached; the text chosen, and the discourse uttered by our 
Lord himself. Had these Nazarenes, who, in their insatiate and zeal- 
ous craving after signs and wonders, wanted him only to do the same 
or greater things than he had done in Capernaum, but known how 
highly honored, far above that of its being made a mere theatre for 
the exhibition of divine power, their synagogue was, in being the first 
place on earth in which that instrument was employed which has 
boen so mighty through God to the pulling down of the strongholds 
of the ungodly and the upbuilding of the church, their vanity might 
have been gratified; but they slighted the privilege thus enjoyed, 
and so lost the benefit. 

The body of the first synagogue sermon of our Saviour has been 
lost. The text and introductory sentence alone remain ; but how 
much do they reveal to us of the nature, the needfulness, the pre- 
ciousness of those spiritual offices which our Divine Redeemer came 
on earih to execute, and which he still stands waiting to discharge 






THE SYNAGOGUE OF NAZARETH. 173 

towards our sinful humanity ! It was to a company of a few hun- 
dreds at the most that the words of Jesus were spoken in the syna- 
gogue at Nazareth ; but that desk from which they were spoken was 
turned into the centre of a circle whose bounds are the ends of the 
earth, and that audience has multiplied to take in the whole family 
of mankind. To the men of every land in every age Jesus has been 
thus proclaiming what the great ends are of his mission to this earth. 
To open blinded eyes, to heal bruised and bleeding and broken hearts, 
to unlock the doors, and unloose the fetters of the imprisoned and 
the bound ; to announce to the poor, the meek, the humble that theirs 
is the kingdom of heaven ; and to proclaim to all that this is the year 
of our Lord, the long year of Christ that takes in all the centuries 
down to his second coming, the year in every day and every hour 
and every moment of which our heavenly Father waits to forgive, 
receive, accept all contrite ones who come to him. Such, our Sav- 
iour tells us, is that great work of grace and power for whose accom- 
plishment he has been anointed of the Father and replenished by the 
Spirit. In that high office to which he has thus been set apart, and 
for which he has been thus qualified, we all need his services. There 
is a spiritual blindness which Jesus only can remove; a spiritual 
imprisonment from which he only can release; a deadly spiritual 
malady eating in upon our heart which he alone can heal. And shall 
he not do all this for us, if we feel our need of its being done, since 
the doing of it is the very design of his most gracious ministry among 
the sinful children of men ? Let us not do him the injustice to believe 
that he will be indifferent to the accomplishment of the very errand 
of mercy on which he came, or that he will refuse in ours or in any 
case to enlighten and emancipate, bind up and heal. 

It seems to us to throw a distinct, and, though not a very broad, 
yet a very clear and beautiful beam of light on the graciousness of 
our Lord's character, that instead of reading the number of verses 
ordinarily recited, he stopped where he did in his quotation from 
Isaiah. Had he gone on, he should have said, "to proclaim the 
acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God." 
Why not go on, why pause thus in the middle of the sentence ? not 
assuredly that he meant either to deny or hide the truth, that the 
day of vengeance would follow upon the acceptable year, if the 
opportunities of that year were abused and lost ; but that then and 
now, it is his chosen and most grateful office to throw wide open the 
arms of the heavenly mercy, and invite all to throw themselves into 
them and be saved. 

But though he came in the Spirit to those among whom he had 



174 I'flE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

been brought up, though he came thus to his own, by his own he wari 
not received, by his own he was despised and rejected. His treat- 
ment at Nazareth was a foreshadowing of the treatment given gener- 
ally to him by his countrymen, and terminating in his crucifixion on 
Calvary. The rude handling in the Galilean village, the binding, the 
scourging, the crucifying in the Jewish capital, were types of that still 
rougher spiritual handling, that crucifying of our Lord afresh which 
the world, in every age, has gone on repeating. It was their very 
familiarity with him in the intercourse of daily life which proved such 
a snare to the Nazarenes, and tempted them into their great offence. 
Let us fear lest our familiarity with him of another kind — the fre- 
quency with which we hear about him, and read about him, and have 
him in one way or other set before us — blind our eyes and blunt our 
hearts to the wonders of his redeeming love, and the exceeding riches 
of his grace and power. 



XVIII. 

First Sabbath in Capernaum, and First Circuit 

of Galilee.* 

The first eight months of our Lord's ministry were spent, as we 
have seen, in Judea. By the sign from heaven, by the Baptist's 
proclamation, by Christ's own words and deeds, he was presented to 
the rulers and to the people as the Son of God, the Messiah. His 
character was misunderstood ; his claims were rejected. At Jerusa- 
lem a plot against his life was formed ; it was no longer safe for him 
to reside where the Jewish authorities had power. Jesus retired to 
Galilee. John 4 : 1-3. Besides the purpose of placing himself be- 
yond the reach of the scribes and Pharisees of Jerusalem, another 
circumstance seems to have had its influence in directing Christ's 
footsteps into Galilee. He heard that John was cast into prison. 
The Baptist's work was over; the labors of the Forerunner were 
closed ; the ground was open for Jesus to occupy. Hitherto, in his 
earlier Judean ministry, he had neither publicly taught in the syna- 
gogues, nor openly and indiscriminately healed the sick, nor called 
any other disciples to his side than those who voluntarily and tem- 
porarily followed him.f We may safely say, then, that prior to his 

* Matt. 4 : 12- 22, 23-25 ; Mark 1 : 21-39 ; Luke 4 : 42-44. 
f His disciples, indeed, in imitation of John's practice, had begun to baptize, 
but as soon as "the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus had 



FIKST SABBATH IN CAPEKNAUM. 175 

appearance in Galilee, lie had taken no steps either to proclaim the 
advent of the kingdom, or, by the selection of a band of chosen 
adherents, to lay the foundation of that new economy which was to 
take the place of the one which was now waxing old and was ready to 
vanish away. It looks as if, before fully and openly entering on the 
task of providing a substitute for that Judaic economy which his own 
kingdom was to overturn, Jesus had gone up to Jerusalem, and given 
to the head and representatives of the Jewish commonwealth the 
choice of receiving or rejecting him as their Messiah. It was not, 
at least, till after he had been so rejected in Judea, that he began in 
Galilee to preach the gospel of the kingdom, (Matt. 1 : 15,) and to 
plant the first seeds of that tree whose leaves were to be for the 
healing of the nations. This helps to explain at once the marked 
difference between Christ's course of conduct during the period which 
immediately succeeded his baptism, which was passed in Judea, and 
the laborious months in Galilee which followed, and the marked 
silence regarding the former which is preserved by the first three 
evangelists, who all make our Lord's ministry begin in Galilee, and 
contain no allusion to any thing as happening between the tempta- 
tion in the wilderness and the opening of his ministry there. Nor do 
they allude to any visits of Jesus to Jerusalem prior to those which 
he made after his final departure from Galilee, and which preceded 
his crucifixion. With them, up to that time, Galilee appears as the 
exclusive theatre of our Lord's labors. It is to the supplemental 
gospel of St. John that we are indebted for all our knowledge of the 
memorable incidents in Judea, which preceded the first preaching in 
the synagogue of Nazareth. "We can understand this singular silence 
of the first three evangelists, if we regard our Lord's earlier appear- 
ance and residence in Judea as constituting rather a preliminary 
dealing with the Jews, in the way of testing their disposition and 
capacity to welcome him as their own last and greatest prophet, than 
as forming an integral part of that work whereby the foundations of 
the Christian church were laid. 

Kejected by the chiefs of the people in the capital, Jesus come? 
to Galilee. There, in the synagogue of the town in which he had 
made and baptized more disciples than John, (though Jesus himself baptized 
not, but his disciples,) he left Judea, and departed again into Galilee." John 
4 : 1-3. It would seem to have been a sudden impulse of zeal in their Master's cause 
which led those first disciples to engage so eagerly in baptizing — a zeal which, 
instead of checking or rebuking, Jesus dealt with by quietly cutting of the occa- 
sion for its display. By his own removal to Galilee, an entirely new state ol 
things was ushered in, and by John's imprisonment his baptism ceased ; nor do 
we read anywhere of a Galilean baptism by the disciples of Jesus. 



176 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

lived so many years, lie first publicly proclaims his office and his 
work, as the healer of the broken-hearted, the restorer of sight 
to the blind, the deliverer of the captives, the preacher of the gospel 
to the poor — an office and a work which had nothing of confinement 
in it, nothing restricting it to any one age or country. But there, 
too, by his fellow-townsmen at Nazareth, as by the rulers of the cap- 
ital, he is rejected, and so he descends to the shores of the sea of 
Galilee. Walking by these shores, he sees first Andrew and Peter 
casting a net into the sea. He says to them, "Follow me, and I 
will make you fishers of men. Straightway they leave all and follow 
him." A little farther on, another pair of brothers, James and John, 
are in their boat mending their nets. He calls them in the same way, 
and they leave their boat and their nets, their father and the hired 
servants, and follow. He was not speaking to strangers, to those 
previously ignorant or indisposed to follow him. Andrew was one of 
the two disciples of John who had heard the Baptist say, " Behold 
the Lamb of God," and who had followed Jesus. The other of these 
two disciples was John. Andrew had brought his brother Peter to 
Jesus; and though it is not said that John had done the same with 
his brother James, the latter must already have been acquainted with 
Christ. Andrew, Peter, and John had followed Jesus from Betha- 
bara to Cana, and had witnessed there the first of his miracles. They 
had been up at Jerusalem, and seen the miracles which Jesus wrought 
at the first Passover which he attended. They may have taken part 
in the baptizing, may have been with Jesus at the well of Jacob. 
Mention is made of disciples of Jesus being there with him, and who 
so likely to be among them as those who first followed him from 
Bethabara? But they do not appear as yet to have attached them- 
selves permanently to his person, nor to have attended him on his 
return from his second visit to the metropolis, nor to have been with 
him at Nazareth. The stopping of the baptisms, the imprisonment 
of John, the scattering of his disciples, may have thrown them into 
some doubt as to the intentions of the new Teacher. For a time a* 
least they had returned to their old occupation as fishermen, and 
were busily employed at it when Jesus met them ; but his voice fell 
upon ears that welcomed its sound, his command upon spirits that 
were ready to obey. Not that they understood as yet that the sum- 
mons was one to relinquish finally their earthly calling. The present 
was but a preliminary invitation to follow Jesus, and chiefly by hear- 
ing what he said, and watching what he did, to be instructed by him 
in the higher art of catching men. It was not till weeks afterwards 
that they were solemnly set apart as his apostles. 



FIKST SABBATH AT OAPEKNAUM. 177 

In the meantime, however, they accompanied him into (Japernaum. 
The entrance of Jesus, attended by the two well-known brothers — 
who, from the mention of hired servants belonging to one of them, 
we may believe, ranked high among their craft — was soon known 
throughout all the town. The inhabitants of Capernaum had already 
heard enough about him to excite their liveliest curiosity. That curi- 
osity had the keenest edge put on it by the manner in which the 
cure of the nobleman's child' had been effected. And now he is 
among them. It would be a crowded synagogue on the Sabbath- 
day when he stood up there to preach for the first time the gospel of 
the kingdom of God. Nothing of what he said upon this occasion 
ka* been preserved. The impression and effect upon his auditors 
are alone recorded: "They were astonished at his doctrine; for he 
taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes;" "his 
word was with power." Mark 1:22; Luke 4:32. The scribes, the 
ordinary instructors of the people, presented themselves simply as 
expositors of the law, written and traditional, claiming no separate or 
independent authority, content with simply discharging the office of 
commentators, and resting their individual claims to respect on the 
manner in which that office was fulfilled. But here is a teacher of 
quite a new order, who busies himself with none of those difficult or 
disputed questions about which the rabbis differed; who speaks to 
the people about a new kingdom — the kingdom of God — to be set up 
among them, and that in a tone of earnestness, certainty, authority, 
to which they were unaccustomed. What can this new kingdom be, 
and what position in it can this Jesus of Nazareth occupy? 

Of one thing they are speedily apprized, that it is a kingdom op- 
posed to that of Satan, intended to destroy it. For among them was 
a man possessed with a devil, who, as Jesus stood speaking to them, 
broke in upon his discourse, and, with a voice so loud as to startle 
the whole synagogue, cried out, addressing himself to Jesus, " Let us 
alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth; art 
thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One 
of God." He speaks in the name of others, as representing the 
whole company of evil spirits, to whom, at that time, here and there, it 
had been alio wed to usurp the seat of will and power in human breasts, 
and so to possess the men in whom they dwelt as to strip them of 
their volition and conscious identity, and to turn them into human 
demons. But how came this human demon into the synagogue, and 
what prompted him to utter such cries of horror and of spite? Was 
this devil as mucJi beside himself as the poor man in whom he dwelt? 
Had the presence the look, the words of Jesus such a power ovex 

Life of Christ. 12 



178 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

him that as the man could not regulate or restrain his own actions, 
so neither could the deyil regulate or, restrain his thoughts and 
words? His exclamations sound to our ear like the mad, involunta- 
ry, impotent outcries of the vassals of a kingdom who feel that the 
reins of empire are passing out of their hands, but who cannot give 
them up without telling who the greater than they is who has come 
to' dispossess them of their power. 

Whatever may be thought of the kind of pressure under which 
the devil who possessed this man acted ; whether the testimony he 
gave to our Lord's character be regarded as free and spontaneous, 
intended rather to injure than to honor ; or whether it be regarded as 
unwillingly drawn forth by close personal contact with the Holy One, 
the testimony so given was not welcomed by Christ. It came unsuit- 
ably from a quarter whence no witness should be borne to him, nor 
was wished for, as it came unseasonably, when premature revelations 
of his true character were not desired. In other instances as well as 
this Jesus did not suffer the devils to speak, "because they kne^\ 
him," acting as to them on the same principle on which he often cau- 
tioned those whom he healed and his own disciples not to make him 
known, seeking by such repression to prevent any hurrying forward 
before its time of what he knew would be the closing catastrophe of 
his career. But though refused thus, and as it were rejected by oui 
Lord, its first wild, impatient utterances all that it was permitted to 
give forth, this voice is most striking to us now as a testimony from 
the demon-world, through which a knowledge of who Jesus truly 
was seems so rapidly to have circulated. The prince of darkness, in 
his temptation of our Lord a year before, seems himself to have been 
in some doubt, as he put the question so often, " If thou be the Sod 
of God." But no doubt was entertained by the devils who came, as 
Luke tells us, " out of many, crying out and saying, Thou art Christ, 
the Son of God." Luke 4 : 41. Some have thought that those demo- 
niacs whom Christ cured were lunatics, and nothing more ; men whose 
deranged and disordered intellects were soothed down into calmness 
and order by the gentle yet firm voice and look and power of Christ. 
But what are we to make of the unique testimony that so many of 
them gave to Christ's Messiahship and Sonship to God ; and that al 
the very commencement of his ministry? Were lunatics the only 
ones who knew him ? or whence got they such knowledge and sucl 
faith ? 

Accepting, with whatever mystery the whole subject of demoniac 
possession is clothed, the simple account of the evangelists, it does 
appear most wonderful — the quick intelligence, the wild alarm, the 



FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. 17'J 

terror-striking faith that then pervaded the demon-world, as if all the 
spirits of hell who had been suffered to make human bodies their 
habitation, grew pale at the very presence of Jesus, and could not 
but cry out in the extremity of their despair. 

"Hold thy peace," said Jesus to the devil in the synagogue, "and 
come out of him." The man was seen to fall, torn as by violent con- 
vulsions; a loud, inarticulate, fiendish cry was heard to issue from 
his lips ; (Mark 1:36; Luke 4 : 35 ;) hale and unhurt, the devil gone, 
the man himself again, he rose to converse with those around, and to 
return to his home and friends. Amazement beyond description 
seized at once on all who saw or heard of what had happened. Men 
said to one another, in the synagogue, on the streets, by the high- 
ways, ' What thing is this, what a word is this ! for with authority he 
commandeth even the unclean spirits, and they do obey him. And 
immediately (it could scarce well have been otherwise) the fame of 
Him went out into every place of the country, and spread abroad 
throughout all the region round about Galilee.' Mark 1 : 27, 28 ; 
Luke 4 : 36, 37. Chiefly, however, in Capernaum did the excitement 
prevail, begun by the cure of the demoniac in the synagogue, quick- 
ened by another cure that followed within an hour or two. The ser- 
vice of the synagogue closed before the mid-day meal. At its close 
Jesus accepted an invitation to go to the house of Simon and Andrew. 
These brothers, as we know, were natives of Bethsaida, and had hith- 
erto resided there. But recently they had removed to Capernaum. 
Peter having married, and perhaps taken up his abode in the house 
of his mother-in-law, James and John were also of the invited guests. 
Jesus did not know that the house he went to was one of sickness, 
and his ignorance in this respect creates the belief that it was the 
first time he had entered it. But soon he hears that the great fever 
(it is the physician Luke who in this way describes it) has seized 
upon Simon's wife's mother. They tell him of it ; he goes to, bends 
kindly over her, takes her by the hand, rebukes the fever. The cure 
is instantaneous and complete. She rises, as if no disease had ever 
weakened her, with glad and grateful spirit to wait upon Jesus and 
the rest. And so within that home kindly hands were provided, like 
those of Martha at Bethany, to minister to the Saviour's wants during 
the busiest, most toilsome period of his life, when, in season and out 
of season, early in the morning and far on often in the night, lie came 
and went, living longer under that roof of Peter's house at Caperna- 
um, than under any other that sheltered him after his public ministry 
had begun. This cure, too, was noised abroad through the city. 
Here was an opportunity not to be lost* for who could tell but that 



180 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

next morning Jesns will be gone? Though it was the Sabbath, 
Jesus had not scrupled to eject the devil and rebuke the fever ; but 
the people could not so easily get over their scruples. They wait till 
the sun has set before they apply to this new and strange physician. 
But meanwhile all that were diseased in Capernaum, and all that 
were possessed, were brought. All the city had gathered together 
at the door of Peter's house. The sun goes down, and Jesus steps 
out into that bustling, anxious crowd ; he lays his hand on every one 
of the diseased (Luke 4 : 40) and heals them, and casts out all the 
spirits with his word. The stars would be shining brightly in the 
heavens ere the busy blessed work was done, and within a few hours 
a city which numbered many thousand inhabitants saw disease of 
every kind banished from its borders. 

After the excitement and fatigue of such a day, Jesus may lay his 
head peacefully on his pillow, and take the rest that such labor has 
earned. But long before the others — while yet they are all sleeping 
in Simon's house around him — rising up a great while before day, he 
goes out into a solitary place to pray. Was it on his own account 
that Jesus thus retired? Was his spirit too much under the dis- 
tracting influence which such a scene of bustle and excitement as he 
had passed through the day before, was fitted to exert ? Did he feel 
the need to calm the inward tumult by silent and solitary communion 
with heaven? As we follow his footsteps, let us be careful to notice 
and to remember in what circumstances it was that Christ resorted to 
special, solitary, continued prayer. But in leaving Capernaum, alone 
and so early, Jesus had in view the state of others as well as his own. 
He was well aware how apt, in his case, the office of the healer, the 
wonder-worker, was to overshadow that of the teacher, the preacher 
of the glad tidings ; how ready the inhabitants of Capernaum already 
were to hail and honor him in this one character, however little they 
might be disposed to regard or obey him in the other. He had done 
enough of that one kind of work, had got enough of that one kind of 
homage, there. And so, when, after an eager search for him, he is 
found — and Simon and the disciples tell him that all men were seek- 
ing for him, and the people when they came up entreat him that he 
should not depart from them (compare Mark 1 : 36, 38, and Luke 
4:42, 43) — Jesus says to the one, "Let us go into the next towns, 
that I may preach there also;" and to the other, "I must preach the 
kingdom of God to other cities also, for therefore am I sent." He 
did not, indeed, forsake the city that had treated him so differently 
from his own Nazareth. He chose it as the place of his most fre- 
quent residence, the centre of his manifold labors, the scene of many 



FIRST CIRCUIT OF GALILEE. 181 

of his most memorable discourses and miracles. But now he must 
not rest on the favor which the healings of this wonderful day have 
won for him. And for a time he left Capernaum, and "went about 
all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel 
of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner 
of disease among the people. And his fame went throughout all 
Syria : and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken 
with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed 
with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the 
palsy; and he healed them. And there followed him great multi- 
tudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusa- 
lem, and from Judea, and from beyond Jordan." Matt. 4 : 23-25. 

We read of nine departures from and returns to Capernaum in 
the course of the eighteen months of our Lord's Galilean ministry; 
of three extensive tours through all the towns and villages of the dis- 
trict like the one now described ; and of five or six more limited ones. 
Had the three evangelists not been so sparing in their notices of 
time and place ; had they not often shown such entire disregard to 
the mere order of time, in order to bring together incidents or dis- 
courses which were alike in character; could we have traced, as w€ 
cannot do, the footsteps of our Saviour from place to place, from 
month to month, as he set forth on these missionary rounds through 
Galilee, made, let us remember, all on foot, we should have had a 
year and a half before us of varied and almost unceasing toil, the 
crowded activities of which would have filled us with wonder. As it 
is, a general conception of how these months were spent is all that 
we can reach. To give distinctness to that conception, let us remem- 
ber what, in extent of surface and in the character and numbers of 
its population, that district of country was to which these pedestrian 
journeys of our Saviour were confined. 

Galilee, the most northern of the three divisions of Palestine, is 
between fifty and sixty miles in length, and from thirty to forty in 
breadth. A three-days' easy walk would take you from Nain, on the 
south, to Caesarea Philippi in the north.— which seem to have been 
the limits in these directions of our Saviour's circuits. Less than two 
days' travel will carry you from the shores of the sea of Galilee to the 
coasts of Tyre and Sidon. Galilee presented thus an area somewhat 
larger than Lancashire and somewhat smaller than Yorkshire. So 
far, therefore, as the mere distances were concerned, it would not 
take long — not more than a week or two — to travel round and through 
it. But then in the Saviour's days it was more densely populated 
than either of the English counties I have named. Josephus, who 



182 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

knew it well, speaks of 204 towns and villages, the smallest of them 
containing above 15,000 inhabitants. Making an allowance for exag- 
geration, the population of the province must have been about three 
millions — as crowded a population as any manufacturing district in 
any of the western kingdoms of Europe now presents. And this pop- 
ulation was of a very mixed character. If the majority were of Jew- 
ish descent, there were so many Phoenicians, Syrians, Arabs, Greeks, 
and others mingled with them, that we may be almost certain that 
Jesus never addressed any large assembly in which there were not 
Gentiles as well as Jews. There cannot be a greater mistake than to 
imagine that, in selecting Capernaum, on the shores of the lake of 
Gennesaret, as his headquarters, and Galilee as his chosen field of 
labor, Jesus was retiring from the populous Judea to a remote and 
unfrequented region. In those days there was much more life said 
bustle in Galilee than in Judea. So far as both the numbers and 
character of its population were concerned, it was a much better, 
more hopeful theatre for such evangelistic labors as those of Jesus. 
The people, though no less national in their spirit, were much less 
infected with ecclesiastical prejudice. The seed had thus a better 
soil to fall upon. Though a Eoman governor was placed over them, 
the scribes and Pharisees had great power in Jerusalem, as they 
proved in effecting the crucifixion. Herod Antipas, who ruled over 
Galilee, had none of the jealousies of the Jewish Sanhedrim ; and in 
point of fact, does not appear till the last to have taken much inter- 
est in, or in any way to have interfered with the proceedings of Jesus. 
So long as he confined himself to the work of a religious teacher, 
Herod had no desire to meddle with his doings ; and even if he had, 
Jesus had but to cross the lake of Galilee, to put himself beyond his 
power by placing himself under the protection of Philip, the gentlest 
and most humane of the Herods. 

Well adapted every way as Galilee was for our Lord's peculiar 
work — the laying of the first foundations of the Christian faith, a faith 
which was to spread over the whole earth — Capernaum was equally 
fitted to be the centre whence his labors were to radiate. Looked at 
as you find it marked upon the map of Galilee, it does not occupy any 
thing like a central position. But looked at in relation to the popu- 
lation and to the means of transit, a better centre could not have 
been selected. Wherever its site was, it lay on the northwestern shore 
of the sea of Galilee, close upon, if not within the plain of Gennesaret.* 

* After visiting the ruins of Khan Mineyeh and Tell Hum, the writer had no 
hesitation in deciding in favor of the latter as more likely to have been the site r / 
Capernaum. 



FIRST CIRCUIT OF GALILEE. 18S> 

This plain — three miles long and two miles broad — was then dot- 
ted with villages teeming with population, and of the most exu- 
berant fertility. " One may call the place," says the Jewish histo- 
rian, " the ambition of nature, where it forces those plants that are 
naturally enemies to one another to agree together; it is a happy 
contention of the seasons, as if every one of them laid claim to this 
country." While all round its shores the sea of Galilee saw towns 
and villages thronged with an agricultural and manufacturing popu- 
lation, itself teemed with a kind of wealth that gave large occupation 
to the fisherman. How numerous the boats were that once skimmed 
its surface, and how large the numbers employed as fishermen, may 
be gathered from the fact that in the wars with the Eomans two hun- 
dred small vessels were once collected for the only naval action in 
which the Jews ever engaged. Remembering that the lake is only 
thirteen miles long and fiye or six miles broad, it is not too much, 
perhaps, to say that never did so small a sheet of water see so many 
keels cutting its surface, or so many human habitations circling round 
and shadowing its waves, as did the sea of Galilee in the days of 
Jesus Christ. 

Now all is silent there ; lonely and most desolate. Till last year, 
but a single boat floated upon its waters. On its shores, Tiberias in 
ruins and Magdala composed of a few wretched hovels are all that 
remain. You may ride round and round the empty beach, and, these 
excepted, never meet a human being nor pass a human habitation, 
Capernaum, Chorazin, Bethsaida are gone. Here and there yon 
stumble over ruins, but none can tell you exactly what they were. 
They knew not, those cities of the lake, the clay of their visitation ; 
their names and their memory have perished. 



« 



184 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 



It will be found that Part II, comprising five Studies on Jesus' 
main ministry in Galilee, covers the period in which he enjoyed his 
greatest popularity. Great crowds constantly thronged him, and he 
was most active in deeds of healing and in preaching and teaching. 

But apparently our Lord was never misled into supposing that 
this movement of the populace formed any secure basis on which to 
found his kingdom. Rather its strength would rest in a little band of 
chosen men whom he should select and train; and the present Study 
shows how he began to choose his apostles and to give them and others 
some of the key-notes of the new conception of service to God. He is 
indeed causing new and most vital forces to enter into the life of 
humanity; and the new wine must have new bottles. 



PART II. MAIN MINISTRY IN GALILEE. 
Study 6. Special Cases and Controversies and First Apostles. 

(1) Power over leprosy and paralysis ._ 185-193 

o. The leper's ceremonial uncleanness and exclusion from 

society 185, 186 

b. A victim's faith in and prayer to Christ 186, 187 

c. His instant cure at Christ's touch and word 187, 188 

d. Jesus' retirement for prayer 188, 189 

e. A paralytic's desire to reach Jesus 189-191 

/. He is let down through the roof 191 

g. Watchful and hostile observers 191-193 

h. The man is forgiven and healed 192, 193 

(2) Sabbath controversies 194-203 

a. The Sabbath as a memorial in Hebrew Scriptures 194, 195 

b. Free from specific injunctions 195, 196 

c. Growth of minute rules after the exile 196, 197 

d. Jesus purposely wrought cures on the Sabbath to free it 

from wrong restrictions 197-199 

e. He defends his disciples in plucking the heads of grain on 

the Sabbath 199, 200 

/. His statement of principles 201, 202 

g. Cure of man with withered hand 202, 203 

(3) Call of the first candidates for the apostolate 204-213 

a. Jesus cannot depend on popular favor 204 

b. Therefore he will select and train twelve men 204, 205 

c. Call of the first five 205-209 

d. Parables showing the new kingdom 210-213 



THE MINISTRY IN GALILEE. 



I. 

The two Healings — The Leper and the Paralytic/ 

In describing our Lord's first circuit through Galilee, the evange- 
list tells us that " they brought unto him all sick people that were 
taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were pos- 
sessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had 
the palsy; and he healed them." Matt. 4 :24. How many and how 
varied were the cures effected within the course of this first itineracy 
of our Lord can only be conceived by remembering how numerous 
were the towns and villages through which he passed, and how large 
the population with which, one way or other, he was brought into 
contact.f Kemembering this, we may believe that within a week or 
two after his first departure from Capernaum more healings were 
effected than the whole put together, of which any specific record has 
been preserved in the four gospels. 

There was one form of disease, however, which is not noticed in 
St. Matthew's compendious description — a disease peculiar enough 
in its own character, bat to which an additional peculiarity attached 
from the manner in which it was dealt with by the Mosaic law. 
However infectious, however deadly, however incurable, no disease 
but one was held to render its victim ceremonially unclean. Such 
uncleanness was stamped by the law upon the leper alone. This 
strange, creeping, spreading, loathsome, fatal disease appears to have 
been selected as the one form of bodily affliction to stand, in the legal 
impurity attached to it, and in the penalties visited on that impurity, 
as a type of the deep, inward, pervading, corrupting, destroying mal- 
ady of sin. 

Among the Jews the leper was excommunicated. Cut off from 
the congregation of the people, he had to live apart, enjoying only 
such society as those afflicted with the same disease could offer. He 

« Matt. 8:2-4; Mark 1 : 40^5, 2 : 1-12 ; Luke 5 : 12-26. 
t Earlier Years, pp. 181, 182. 



186 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

had to bear upon his person the emblems of sorrow and of death , 
had to wear the rent garments which those wore who were weeping 
for the dead ; to shave his head and keep it bare as those must do 
who had touched the dead — himself the living dead, for whom those 
emblems of mourning needed to be assumed. His face half covered, 
ho had to go about crying, " Unclean, unclean," to warn all others 
off, lest they should come too near to him. 

From what we know of the prevalence of this disease, it may 
be believed that there were many lepers in Galilee when our Lord 
made his first journey through it — gathered here and there into small 
and miserable communities. Even among these the tidings of the 
wonderful cures that were being effected would circulate, for the 
segregation was not so complete as to prevent all intercourse ; and 
when these poor exiles from their fellows heard of many being healed 
whose complaints were as much beyond all human remedy as theirs, 
the hope might spring up in their hearts that the Great Healer's 
powers extended even to their case. But which of them had faith 
enough to make the trial — to break through the legal fences imposed, 
and go into any of the cities in which Jesus was, and throw himself up- 
on his sympathy for succor ? One such there was — the first of those 
so afflicted who ventured to approach the Lord ; and his case on that 
account was selected for special reference by all the three evange- 
lists. He came to Jesus " when he was in a certain city." * He had 
never seen the Lord before, or seen him only at a distance, among a 
crowd. He could have known or heard but little more about him 
than what the voice of rumor had proclaimed. Yet so soon as he 
recognizes him, see with what reverence he kneels and worships and 
falls on his face before him, (Luke 5 : 12,) and hear how he salutes 
and pleads, " Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." Per- 
haps Jesus had never seen a man prostrate himself in his presence as 
this man did. Certainly, Jesus was never before addressed in words 
so few and simple, yet so full of reverence, earnestness, faith, submis- 
sion. He called Jesus Lord. Was this the first time that Jesus had 
been so addressed? Sir, Eabbi, Master — these were the terms in 
which Andrew, and Nathanael, and Nicodemus, and the woman of 
Samaria, and the nobleman of Capernaum had addressed him. None 
of them had spoken to him as this leper did. If, indeed, the mirac- 
ulous draught of fishes by which Peter had been finally summoned 
away from his old occupation had already occurred, then it would 

* Had the name of that city been given it might have helped to trace the 
course that Jesus was taking, but here, as in many other instances, the means of 
identification are denied. 



THE LEPER AND THE PARALYTIC. 187 

be from his lips that this title was first heard coming, when he fell 
down at Jesus' feet exclaiming, " Depart from me, for I am a sinful 
man, O Lord." That, however, is uncertain ; but though it were 
true, how much had Simon to elevate his conception of Christ's char- 
acter — how little this leper ! One wonders, indeed, how far he had 
got in his idea of who this Jesus — this healer of diseases — was. All 
that we can know is that he chose the highest title that he knew of, 
and bestowed it on him. " Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst." No hesi- 
tation as to the power ; no presumption or dictation as to the will. 
Upon that free will, upon that almighty power, he casts himself. 
"Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." Jesus instantly went 
forward — went close to him — put forth his hand and touched him. 
His disciples hold back ; a strange shuddering sensation passes 
through the hearts of the onlookers, for, by the law of Moses, it was 
forbidden to touch a leper. He who touched a leper himself became 
unclean. Yet at once, without hesitation at the time — without act- 
ing afterwards as if he had contracted any defilement or required any 
purification — Jesus lays his hand upon one who was " full of leprosy," 
and he says to him, " I will, be thou clean." We lose a little of the 
power and majesty of our Saviour's answer in our translation. Two 
words were spoken, (eau : KaSaplaQ^n,) the answer, the echo to the 
prayer ; two of the very words the man had used taken up and em- 
ployed by Jesus in framing his prompt and gracious reply. No petition 
that was ever presented to Jesus met with a quicker, more complete, 
more satisfactory response. If our Lord's conduct in this instance 
was regulated by the principle which we know so often guided it in 
the treatment he gave to those who came to him to be cured, great 
must have been the faith which was met in such a way. The readiness 
which Jesus had displayed to exert his power may partly have been 
due to this being the first case of a leper's application to him, and to 
his desire to show that no legal barrier would be allowed by him to 
stand in the way of his stretching forth his hand to heal all that 
were diseased. Yet, the manner and the speech of the leper himself 
attest that he approached with no ordinary reverence, and petitioned 
with no ordinary faith. And, according to his faith, it was done 
unto him immediately. As soon as the words, "I will, be thou 
clean," had come from the Saviour's lips, "the leprosy departed 
from him, and he was cleansed." 

Did any further colloquy take place between the healed and (he 
Healer? When, quick as lightning, through the frame the sensatior 
passed of an entirely recovered health — when he stood up before the 
Lord, not a sign or symptom of the banished leprosy on his person— 



188 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

did no thanks burst from his grateful lips? or did our Lord say 
nothing to him about another healing which he was both willing and 
able to effect ? We are not to infer that nothing of the kind occur- 
red because nothing is recorded. The evangelists have preserved 
alone the fact that, whatever words may have passed between them, 
Jesus was in haste to send the leper away, and in doing so gave him 
strict command to tell no man, but to go instantly and show himself 
to the priest, and offer the gifts that Moses commanded — the live 
birds and the cedar wood, and the scarlet and the hyssop — the means 
and instruments by which the purification of one declared free of 
leprosy was to be effected, and, relieved from the ban that had been 
laid upon him, he was to be reinstated in the possession of all the 
common privileges of society and citizenship. It is quite possible 
that, knowing the opposition which was already kindling against him, 
of which we shall presently see traces, Jesus may have desired that, 
without throwing out any hint of what had occurred which might 
precede him by the way and prejudice the judge, this man should 
repair as quickly as possible to the priest upon whom it devolved 
judioially to declare that he, so recently a man full of leprosy, was 
now entirely free of the complaint. It would be a testimony they 
could not well gainsay, if the fact of the departure of the leprosy were 
attested by the acceptance of the offerer's gifts and his readmission 
into the congregation of Israel. To prevent any possibility of this 
ratification of the reality of the cure being refused, Jesus might have 
enjoined silence and as speedy a resort as possible to the priest; the 
silence in such circumstances and with such a view prescribed, to last 
only till the desired end was gained. It would seem, however, from 
the result, that a more immediate object of the Saviour in laying this 
injunction upon the leper was to prevent the influx of a still greater 
crowd than that which was already oppressing him, and thus the 
hampering of his movements, and the absorption of too much of his 
time in the mere work of healing. For straightway, though charged 
to keep silence, the man when he went from Jesus could not restrain 
himself, but "began to publish it much, and to blaze abroad the mat- 
ter, insomuch that great multitudes came together to be healed of 
their infirmities, and Jesus could no more openly enter into the city, 
but was without in desert places, and withdrew himself into the wil- 
derness, and prayed." Mark 1:45; Luke 5: 15, 16. 

Again, a second time, as it was after that busy Sabbath in Caper- 
naum, and before his first journey through Galilee, so now, at the 
close of this circuit and under the pressure of the multitude that beset 
hi3 path, Jesus is driven forth from the city's crowded haunts to seek 



THE LEPEE AND THE PARALYTIC. 189 

the solitary place, where for some hours at least he may enjoy un- 
broken communion with heaven. To watch how and when it was 
that he took refuge thus in prayer, mingling devotion with activity, 
the days of bustle with the hours of quiet, intercourse with man in 
fellowship with God, let this be one of our cherished employments, 
following the earthly footsteps of our Lord : for nothing is more fitted 
to impress upon us the lesson — how needful, how serviceable it is, ii 
we would walk and work rightly among or for others around us, that 
we be often alone with our Father which is in heaven. A life ail 
action will be as bad for our own soul as a life all prayer would be 
profitless for others. It is the right and happy blending, each in its 
due proportion, of stillness and of action, of work and prayer, which 
promotes true spiritual health and growth ; and the weaker we are — 
the more easily at once distracted and absorbed by much bustling 
activity — so much the more of reflection, retirement, and devotion is 
needed to temper our spirit aright, and to keep it in harmony with 
that of our Lord and Master. 

It is as impossible to tell how long a time it took to make the 
first round of the Galilean towns and villages, as it is to define the 
line or circle along which Jesus moved. One high authority* con- 
cludes that it must have occupied between two and three months; 
another,! that it did not occupy more than four or five days. A 
period of intermediate length would probably be nearer the truth 
than either. On completing the circuit he returned to Capernaum, 
to take up his abode again in Peter's house. No rest was given him. 
The news of his return passed rapidly through the town, and straight- 
way so many were gathered together "that there was no room to 
receive them, no, not so much as about the door." We must remem- 
ber here, in order to understand what followed, the form of a Jewish 
house, and the materials of which its roof was ordinarily composed. 
There is not now, and there never seems to have been, much variety 
in the shape of Syrian dwelling-houses. Externally they all present 
the one dull uniform appearance of so many cubes or squares, seldom 
more than one story high — the outer walls showing no windows, nor 
any opening on the level of the ground except the door. On entering 
you pass through a lesser court, into which alone strangers are admit- 
ted, and then into the inner uncovered square into which the differ 
ent apartments of the building open. In one corner, either of the 
outer or inner court — generally in the latter — there is a flight of steps 
conducting to the roof, a place of frequent resort at all times, and in 
the hotter months of summer turned into the sleeping-place of th<i 
• Gresw&ll. t Ellicott, 



190 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

honseli old. The larger houses, in which the wealthier inhabitants 
reside, are all separate from one another. The lesser are often with- 
out any open courtyard, and built close together, so that you could 
pass readily from roof to roof. These roofs, always flat, are formed 
of bricks or tiles, or more generally of a compost of mud and straw, 
which a day's such rain as we often have would entirely demolish. 
Whatever the size of the houses be, or however they be situated rela- 
tively to each other, in one way or other, either by a staircase within 
the court — open, of course, only to the family to which the house 
belongs — or by a flight of steps without — which, when the houses are 
contiguous, may serve many households as a common means of 
access — the roof of each dwelling is easily reached. We do not need 
to settle what size the dwelling was in Capernaum where Jesus took 
up his abode; we have only to imagine it to be of the usual and 
invariable Syrian type,. to render the narrative intelligible. 

A crowd assembles and fills the room of the house in which Jesus 
sits and teaches. At first this crowd is not so dense but that a sin- 
gle individual may pass through it, and in this wa}^ one and another 
of the diseased did press through, and the power of the Lord was 
there to heal them. But the crowd grew and thickened, it overflowed 
the room, it filled the street before the door, till every spot within 
reach of Christ's voice was occupied, and still there were new-comers 
pressing in to try and catch a word ; and to the work of healing with- 
in an effectual stop seems now to have been put. At this stage four 
men appear, bearing a sick man on a litter. They reach the crowd, 
they try to enter, they entreat, they expostulate ; the thing is hope- 
less, that four men with such a burden ever shall get through. Is 
the project to be given up, the great chance lost ? The bearers con- 
sult the man they carry. He is paralytic, cannot move a limb, can 
do nothing for himself. But he is in full possession of his faculties ; 
the spirit is entire within. It was his eagerness to be healed, still 
more than their readiness to help him, that had led these four men 
to lift him and carry him so far, and they are ready still to do any 
thing — any thing they can. Some one suggests — who so likely as 
the paralytic himself ? — that they might get upon the roof, lift up so 
much of it as was required, and let down before Christ the bed on 
which the patient lay ; a singular, an extreme step to take, yet one to 
which men who were resolved to do any thing rather than lose the 
Opportunity- might not refuse to have recourse. 

They all were strong in the belief that if only they could get at 
Jesus the cure m ould be effected, but the paralytic himself had an 
eager craving to get into the Saviour's presence, deeper than thai 




'Gently They Let Down the Bed. 



THE LEPER AND THE PARALYTIC. 191 

springing from the desire to have his bodily ailment removed. The 
stroke that had taken the strength out of his body had quickened 
conscience. He had recognized it as coming from the hand of God ; 
it had awakened within him a sense of his great and manifold bygone 
transgressions. His sins had taken hold of him, and the burden was 
too heavy for him to bear. He hears of Jesus that he had announced 
himself as the healer of the broken-hearted; that there is a gospel, 
good tidings that he proclaims to the poor in spirit. If ever a heart 
needed healing, a spirit needed comforting, it is his. And now, shall 
he be so near to him whom he has been so anxious to see, and yet 
have to go away disappointed, unrelieved ? He either himself sug- 
gests, or when suggested, he warmly approves, the project of trying 
to let him down through the roof. The bearers second his desires 
They make the effort — they succeed : noiselessly they lift the tiles— 
gently they let down the bed, and before Jesus, as he is speaking, the 
bed and its burden lie. 

But now, before noticing how Jesus met this interruption of his 
discourse, and dealt with the man who was so curiously obtruded on 
his notice, let us look around a moment on the strangely constituted 
audience which Christ at this moment is addressing. Close beside 
him are his disciples — around him are many simple-minded, simple- 
hearted men, drinking in with wonder words they scarce half under- 
stand. But they are not all friendly listeners who are there, for there 
are " Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting by," some from Galilee, 
some from Judea, some even from Jerusalem. The last — what has 
brought them here ? They come as spies — they come as emissaries 
from the men who reproved Jesus at Jerusalem for his healing of 
another paralytic at the pool of Bethesda on the Sabbath-day, and 
who sought to slay him, "because he had not only broken the Sab- 
bath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal 
with God." Already these Pharisees counted Jesus a blasphemer, 
whose life they were seeking but the fit ground and occasion to cut 
off. And here are some of their number wearing the mask, waiting 
and watching, little knowing all the while that an eye is on them 
which follows every turn of their thoughts, and sees into all the secret 
places of their hearts. It is as one who thus thoroughly knew them, 
and would with his own hand throw a fresh stone of stumbling before 
their feet — as one who thoroughly knew also the poor, helpless, pal 
sied penitent who lies on the bed before him, that Jesus now speak* 
and acts. Meeting those pleading eyes that are fixed so importu- 
nately upon him, without making any inquiries or waiting to havo 
mm petition presented, " Son," he says to the sick of the palsy, " be 



192 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee." He would not have 
addressed him thus had he not known how greatly he needed to be 
cheered, how gladly he would welcome the pardon, in what a suitable 
condition he was to have that pardon bestowed. Let us believe then 
that, spoken with nicest adaptation to the man's state and wants, 
Christ's words were with power — that as quickly and as thoroughly 
as the words, " I will, be thou clean," banished the leprosy from the 
one man's body, as quickly and as thoroughly these words banished 
the gloom and despondency from this man's soul. Thus spoken to 
by one in whom he had full confidence, he was of good cheer, and did 
assuredly believe that his sins had been forgiven him. If it was so — 
if his faith in Jesus as his soul's deliverer was as simple and as strong 
as, from the way in which Christ spoke, we presume it was — then too 
happy would he be at the moment when the blessedness of him whose 
sins are forgiven, whose iniquity is covered, filled his heart, to think 
of any thing beside. He is silent at least, he is satisfied ; he makes 
no remonstrance, he proffers no request. There is nothing going on 
within his breast that Jesus needs to drag forth to light, to detect 
and to rebuke. Not so with the scribes and Pharisees, upon whom 
those words of Jesus have had a quite startling effect. They too are 
silent; nor, beyond the glances of wonder, horror, hate, that they 
hastily and furtively exchange, do they give any outward si^jn ol 
what is passing in their hearts. But Jesus knows it all. They Tiad 
been saying within themselves, "This man blasphemeth ;" they had 
been reasoning in their hearts, to their own entire satisfaction and to 
Christ's utter condemnation, saying, "Why doth this man thus speak 
blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only?" Notwithstand- 
ing all their self-assurance, they must have been a little startled 
when, the thoughts of their hearts revealed, Jesus said to them, 
" Why reason ye these things in your* hearts? Whether is it easier 
to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee ; or to say, 
Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk?" He does not ask which was 
easier, to forgive sins or to cure a palsy, but which was easier, to say 
the one or to say the other, for he knew that they had been secretly 
thinking how easy it was for any man to say to another, " Thy sins be 
forgiven thee," but how impossible it was for him to make good such 
a saying. "But that ye may know," he added, " that the Son of man 
hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the 
palsy,) Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thy house." 
The man arose and departed to his own house — healed in body, 
healed in Spirit — glorifying God. The people saw it and were amazed, 
and v/ere filled with awe; and they said to one another, "We uevex 



THE LEPER AND THE PARALYTIC. 198 

saw it in this fashion — we have seen strange things to-day." And 
"they glorified God which had given such power to men." The 
scribes and Pharisees saw it, and had palpable evidence of the super- 
human knowledge and superhuman power of Christ given to them — 
had a miracle wrought before their eyes in proof of Christ's posses- 
sion of a prerogative which they were right in thinking belonged to 
G^d only, but they would not let any thing convince them that the 
Son of man had power on earth to forgive sins; and it was not long, 
as we shall see, ere new stumbling-blocks were thrown in their way, 
over which they fell. 

Our Saviour, in bodily presence, has now passed away from ua 
He can touch us no more with his living finger ; he banishes no more 
our bodily diseases with a word ; but the leprosy of the heart — the 
spreading, pervading taints of ungodliness, selfishness, malignity, 
impurity — these it is his office still to cure ; these it is our duty still 
to carry to him to have removed ; and if we go in the spirit of him 
who said, "Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean," the cleans- 
ing virtue will not be withheld. 

The Son of man had power on earth to forgive sins ; he exercised 
that power ; he absolved at once the penitent of Capernaum from all 
his sins; he caused that man to taste the joy of an immediate, gr^ 
cious, free, and full forgiveness. What is to hinder our receiving the 
same benefit — enjoying the same blessing? Has the Son of man lost 
any of his power to forgive sins by his being no more upon this earth, 
his having passed into the heavens? Is pardon a boon that he no 
longer dispenses, that he holds now suspended over our heads — a 
thing to be hoped for but never to be had? No, let us believe that 
his mission on earth has not so failed in its great object; that he is as 
willing as he is able to say and do for each of us what he said and 
did for the palsied man in Peter's house at Capernaum; that he 
waits but to see us penitent and broken-hearted, looking to and 
trusting in him, to say in turn to each of us, " Son— Daughter— be d 
good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee." 



13 



194 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

II. 

The Charge of $abbath-break:ing.* 

3Ct was a common saying among the Jews, that whoever did uiy 
work on the Sabbath-day denied the work of the creation. The say- 
ing was grounded on the fact that one principal end of the Sabbatic 
institute was, by its continued and faithful observance, to preserve a 
knowledge of, and a faith in, the one living and true God as the Creator 
of all things. As being a most explicit and expressive embodiment 
in outward act and habit of the faith of the Jewish people, that in six 
days the Lord made heaven and earth, and the sea and all that in 
them is, it was chosen by God as a fit and appropriate sign of the 
peculiar relationship towards him into which that people had been 
brought — the peculiar standing which among other nations it was to 
occupy. "Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the 
seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God ; in it thou shalt not 
do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-ser- 
vant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates ; 
that thy man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest as well as thou. 
And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and 
that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty 
hand and by a stretched-out arm : therefore, the Lord thy God com- 
manded thee to keep the Sabbath-day." Deut. 5:13-15. "Where- 
fore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the 
Sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. It 
is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever." Exod. 
31:16, 17. "Moreover also I gave them my Sabbaths, to be a sign 
between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that 
sanctify them. Hallow my Sabbaths; that ye may know that I am 
the Lord your God." Ezek. 20 : 12, 20. 

There was no rite, nor institution, not even circumcision, fcy 
which the Jews were more conspicuously distinguished from sur- 
rounding nations, and marked off as the worshippers of Jehovah, the 
Creator of the ends of the earth. Their Sabbath-keeping was a per- 
petual and visible token of the connection in which they stood to God, 
and of the great mission which, under him, they were set apart to 
discharge. But how was the Sabbath to be kept so as to serve this 
end? Looking back here to the original statutes, and to the earlier 
practice of the Jewish people, you will find that there was but one 
* Mark 1:1-31; John 5:1-47; 9: 14; Matt. 12:1-14: Luke 13:10-1/; 14:1-6. 



THE CHARGE OF SABBATH-BREAKING. 195 

positive injunction given; the cessation from all manner of work. 
The rest enjoined, however, could not be the rest of total and abso- 
lute inactivity. The work from which they were to cease could not 
be every doing of the human hand. Obviously it was the work of 
men's ordinary occupation or trade, the work by which the hours of 
common labor were filled by those engaged therein. There is, in- 
deed, one prohibition, the only one, in which there is a specification 
of the kind of work to be desisted from, which would seem to point 
to a narrower interpretation of the original command. When Moses 
had gathered all the congregation of Israel together at the base of 
Sinai, and the people were about to enter on the construction of the 
ark and the tabernacle, knowing with what hearty enthusiasm they 
were inspired, he prefaced his instructions as to the manner in which 
they should carry on the work, by saying, "Six days shall work be 
done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you a holy day, a 
Sabbath of rest to the Lord; ye shall kindle no fire throughout your 
habitation on the Sabbath-day." They did not need to be told to 
kindle no fire for any ordinary culinary purposes. A double portion 
of the manna fell upon the day preceding the Sabbath, and they 
were to seethe and bake the whole of it, so that no preparation of 
food on the Sabbath was required. Issued under such peculiar cir- 
cumstances, it seems not unreasonable to believe that the particular 
object of the Mosaic injunction was to check the ardor of those who 
might otherwise have been tempted to carry on the mouldings and 
the castings in gold and silver on the Sabbath as on other days : not 
that the Jews of all after generations were prohibited by divine com- 
mand from having a fire burning in their dwellings, for whatever pur- 
pose kindled, on the Sabbath-day. 

When we turn from what was prohibited to what was enjoined 
we find a blank. One or two specific injunctions were indeed laid 
upon the priests. The daily sacrifices were to be doubled, and the 
show-bread baked upon the Sabbath was to be renewed. That there 
was no sabbatism in the temple became in this way a proverb. But 
for the people at large there were no minute instructions as to how 
the day was to be spent. It could not have been made imperative 
on them to assemble for public worship on that day, for during the 
times of the Jewish theocracy there was no place but one — the tem- 
ple — for such worship, and the meeting there each seventh day was 
impossible. It was not till after the captivity that synagogues were 
erected all over the land, in which weekly assemblages for worship 
did take place; but that was done, not in obedience to any divine 
command. It would seem, indeed, to have been the practice of the 



196 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Jews, from the beginning, to gather round their prophets on the Sab- 
bath-days, and to avail themselves of such means of religious instruc- 
tion as they could command. Parents took advantage of the rest to 
teach the law unto their children. But there were no peculiar reli- 
gious observances prescribed. The day was spent in rest, in thank- 
fulness, in gladness : spent to a great extent as the festival days of 
other countries were spent. Dressed in their best attire, indulging in 
better fare, it was to feasting rather than to fasting that the Sabbath 
was devoted. But, as the faith of the people grew weak, and their 
allegiance to their divine Sovereign faltered, they grew neglectful of 
the Sabbath, and began to profane the day by breaking in upon that 
rest from all the ordinary occupations of life, which should have been 
observed. Thus it was that, among other distinctive marks of their 
peculiarity as a consecrated people, the only worshippers of the great 
Creator, this one became obscured and well-nigh obliterated. In the 
latest years of the Hebrew commonwealth prophet after prophet was 
raised up to testify against those defections from the faith, among 
which that of neglecting and profaning the Sabbath occupied a con- 
spicuous place. After the captivity, on the restoration of the Jews 
to their own land, the same lax habits prevailed. "In those days," 
says Nehemiah, " saw I in Judah some treading wine-presses on the 
Sabbath, and bringing in sheaves, and lading asses; as also wine, 
grapes, and figs, and all manner of burdens, which they brought into 
Jerusalem on the Sabbath-day : and I testified against them in the 
day wherein they sold victuals." Neh. 13 : 15. Nehemiah did more 
than testify. Alert and decisive in all his movements, he had the 
gates of Jerusalem shut when it began to be dark before the Sab- 
bath, and kept them shut till the Sabbath was over. It is in the 
light of his sayings and doings that we are to interpret the utterance 
from the lips of Jeremiah: "Thus saith the Lord: Take heed to 
yourselves, and bear no burden on the Sabbath-day, nor bring it in 
by the gates of Jerusalem ; neither carry forth a burden out of your 
houses on the Sabbath-day, neither do ye any work, but hallow ye 
the Sabbath-day, as I commanded your fathers." Jer. 17: 21. 

A singular change came over the spirit and habits of the Jewish 
people after the restoration from the Babylonian captivity. Previ- 
ously, in the days of the kings and prophets, they were ever and anon 
showing a tendency to idolatry ; subsequently no such tendency 
appears. Previously they had been neglectful of many of the dis- 
tinctive rites and ceremonies of their faith ; subsequently they became 
strict and punctilious in their observance of them. Great national 
calamities —the persecution under the successors of Alexar ler the 



THE CHARGE OF SABBATH-BREAKING. 197 

Great, the wars of the Maccabees, the aggression of the Komans, the 
ascent into power of the Idumean family of the Herods, the estab- 
lishment of the schools of the Rabbis — all conspired to intensify the 
national pride and religious bigotry of the Jews; who, as they had 
Qothing but the old laws and traditions to cling to, clung to them 
with all the more tenacious grasp. The sect of the Pharisees arose, 
and carried the popular sympathy along with it. Every thing re- 
garded as purely and peculiarly Judaic was exaggerated. Punctil- 
ious observance of the old ritual was the one great merit compensa- 
ting for all defects; while around the simpler statute-law of Moses 
there arose an oral or traditional law, growing continually in bulk 
and overshadowing the primitive Mosaic institute. It had been a 
less evil had the original enactments of that institute continued to be 
rightly and liberally interpreted. Instead of this, the narrowest and 
most rigid interpretation was the only one allowed ; and upon each 
statute as so interpreted additions and explanations were heaped of 
such a character as to turn more and more the keeping of them into 
a mere matter of external routine and outward performance. So 
fared it with the old, broad, and benignant law as to the Sabbath. 
Its primary injunction, "Thou shalt do no manner of work," waa 
falsely held as aimed at all kinds of work whatever ; no less than 
thirty-nine kinds or classes of work being specified as involved in the 
prohibition. It was ruled thus that grass should not be trodden on 
the Sabbath, for the bruising of it was a species of harvest-work ; 
that shoes with nails should not be worn, as that was the carrying a 
burden. To what absurd excesses such a spirit of interpretation led 
may be gathered from the single instance of its being actually laid down 
in the Mishna that a tailor must not go out with his needle near dusk 
on the eve of the Sabbath, lest he should forget, and carry it with 
him on the Sabbath. In all this there was not only a wrong render- 
ing of the Mosaic precept, but beyond, and much worse than that, 
there was the erection of a false standard of duty, a false test oi 
piety — the elevation of the outward, the positive, the ceremonial over 
the inward, the moral, the spiritual ; the putting of the letter that 
killeth above the spirit which maketh alive. 

Now let us see how, born and brought up among a people filled 
with such prejudices, Jesus regulated his conduct. He knew that 
healing the diseased on the Sabbath-day would be regarded as a 
breach of the divine law, would shock the Pharisees, and run coun- 
ter to the convictions of the great mass of the community. Did he 
abstain from effecting cures upon that day? He might easily have 
done so, as no applications were made to him. Much as thov desired 



198 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

to have the benefit conferred, the people shrank from bringing their 
diseased to be cured on the holy day. Jesus had only to meet their 
prejudices by doing nothing. But he did not choose to be thus silent 
and acquiescent. No less than seven miracles are recorded as wrought 
by hini on the Sabbath-day, some of them among the most conspic- 
uous and memorable in his ministry. 1. The cure of the paralytic 
on the occasion of his second visit to Jerusalem. 2. The cure of the 
demoniac in the synagogue of Capernaum, when opening his ministry 
in Galilee. 3. The cure of Peter's wife's mother the same afternoon 
in the same city. 4. The cure of the man with a withered hand, a 
few Sabbaths afterwards, in the same city. 5. The cure of the man 
born blind, who sat begging in the porch of the temple at Jerusalem. 
8. The cure of a woman who had the spirit of infirmity for eighteen 
years. 7. The cure of the man with a dropsy, who happened to be 
present at a feast given on a Sabbath-day in the house of a chief 
publican, an invitation to which Jesus had accepted. Not one of 
these was effected in answer to any application made. They were 
all spontaneous, done of Christ's own free will and motion. Nor was 
there, in regard to most of them, any urgency requiring that the heal- 
ing should have been done that day, if done at all. Jesus might have 
chosen another day rather than the Sabbath to walk, through tho 
-crowded porches of Bethesda. The impotent man had lain too long 
there to make a day earlier or a day later of much moment to him. 
It wa» the same with the blind beggar of Jerusalem ; and these were 
she two instances of cures upon the Sabbath-day which drew most 
public notice, and were attended with the most important results, 
Bui Jesus was not content with simply relieving the sufferers on these 
occasions. He did himself, or he bade his patients do, what he was 
well aware would attract the eye and draw down upon it the con- 
demnation of the priesthood. How easy had it been for him at 
Bethesda to have cured the man in passing, and told him to lie qui- 
etly there till the next day, so that no one should have known any 
thing of the cure. But he told him to take up his bed and carry it 
through the streets, obtruding thus on the eye of the spectators at 
act which seemed to be an open and flagrant breach of the command 
delivered by Jeremiah, " Thus saith the Lord : Take heed to your- 
selves, and bear no burden on the Sabbath-day." Jer. 17 : 21. In 
puring the man born blind, he spat on the ground and made claj ol 
She spittle, and anointed the eyes of the man with the ointment, and 
eaid unto him, "Go wash in the pool of Siloam ;" both which acts 
the making and applying of the ointment and the washing in the 
gacred fountain, were deemed to be desecrations of the Sabbath. It 



THE CHAKGE OF SABBATH-BREAKING. 199 

thus appears that he not only voluntarily selected the Sabbath as the 
day for performing the cures, but wrought them in such a way, or 
accompanied with such directions, as forced them into notice, and 
involved others as well as himself in what was considered a crime of 
the deepest dye — involving in fact the penalty of death. 

The paralytic of the porches and the blind beggar of the wayside 
could both indeed plead in their justification the command of their 
healer, and Jesus took upon himself the full responsibility of their 
acts. In meeting the first challenge of his conduct as a Sabbath- 
breaker, Christ was content, as appears from the narrative in the fifth 
chapter of St. John's gospel, to rest his defence on his Sonship to the 
Father — a sonship that might seem to entitle him to claim and exer- 
cise a liberty of action to which no other might legitimately aspire. 
But, putting that sonship aside, had Christ's act in healing, and the 
man's act in carrying his bed, been violations of the Sabbath lav/ ? 
This question was left unsettled by our Lord's first defence of himself 
against the accusation of the Pharisees. It served to bring the mat- 
ter out, not in a case resting on Christ's peculiar character, posi- 
tion, and rights, but in one involving simply the true interpretation o! 
the existing law, when it was an act of the disciples on which the 
charge of Sabbath-breaking was founded. One Sabbath-day he and 
his disciples were walking through some cornfields in which the 
grain was already white unto the harvest. The disciples being a 
hungered, began to pluck the ears of corn, to rub them in their hands, 
and eat. In doing so, there was no violation by them, as there would 
be with us, of the rights of property. The old Jewish law ran thus : — 
"When thou comest into the standing corn of thy neighbor, then 
thou mayest pluck the ears with thy hand; but thou shalt not move 
a sickle unto thy neighbor's standing corn." Deut. 23 : 25. The law 
and practice of Palestine continue to be this day what they were so 
many thousand years ago. We travelled in that country once in 
spring. Our course lay through it before the ears of corn were full, 
but nothing surprised us more than the liberties which our guides 
took in riding through the fields and letting their horses eat as much 
of the standing corn as they pleased. We felt at first as if we wer« 
trespassers and thieves, but were relieved by finding that it was done 
under the eye and with the full consent of the owners of the crops. 
There was nothing wrong, then, in what the disciples of Jesus did. 
But it was done upon the Sabbath-day, which was thought to be 
unlawful. And there were men who were watching — dogging the steps 
of Jesus and his disciples, perhaps to see whether in their walk they 
vould exceed tho distant to wlvioh. a Sabbath-day's journey had 



200 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

been restricted. So soon as those lynx-eyed men observe what the 
disciples were doing, they inform the Pharisees, who go to Jesus and 
gay, "Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon 
the Sabbath-clay." They were only expressing the popular belief 
which they had. helped to form. It had come to be generally believed 
that plucking and rubbing in the hand ears of corn was work that 
the Sabbath law condemned. Jesus threw a shield of defence over 
the act of his disciples by referring to the conduct of David, esteemed 
to be a model of Jewish piety. Once when he and his men were a 
hungered, he had not scrupled to break the rules, to violate the sanc- 
tity of the holy place. We may believe that it was on a Sabbath- 
day he did so. Doubly appropriate, therefore, was the reference to 
it; but it was not essential to Christ's argument that the act was 
done upon the Sabbath-day. "What Christ mainly desired by his 
allusion to the case of David, was to establish the principle that the 
pressure of hunger vindicated the setting aside for the time of the 
strictest even of the temple regulations. But these regulations, and 
the whole temple service which they sustained, were held to be of 
such superior importance to the Sabbatic law, that when both could 
not be kept, the latter had to give way. A vas,t amount of what else- 
where would have been accounted as Sabbath-breaking went on every 
Sabbath-day in the temple. If the temple, then, carried it over the 
Sabbath, and hunger carried it over the temple, as free of fault as 
David and his men were, so free of fault were Christ's disciples 
To whatever their hunger was due, it had come upon them owing to 
their connection with him ; and if in Jerusalem the temple towered 
above the Sabbath and threw its protection over its servants engaged 
in its work, here in the fields of Galilee was one greater than the 
temple, throwing his protection over his disciples as they followed 
him. They, too, must be acquitted. 

But it is not enough that the act of his disciples be in this way 
vindicated. Our Lord seizes the opportunity to let the Pharisees 
know that they had mistaken the spirit and object of the ceremonial 
law, and particularly of the Sabbatic institute. "But if ye had 
known," he added, "what this meaneth, I will have mercy and not 
eacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless." Jesus quotes 
here from the book of Hosea (chap. 6:6) a saying which m Dre than 
©nee he repeated. It was not a solitary one. Much to the same 
•ffect were the words which the first of the prophets addressed to the 
first of the kings : " Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt-offerings 
and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey 
m better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." 1 Sam. 



THE CHAEGE OF SABBATH-BREAKING. 901 

15:22. The wisest of the kings responds to the words of Samuel by 
the proverb, "To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the 
Lord than sacrifice." Prov. 21 : 3. Isaiah and Jeremiah record words 
of the same import from Jehovah's lips: "I delight not, saith the 
Lord, in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. "Wash 
ye, make you clean ; put away the evil of your doings from before 
mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well." "Thus saith the 
Lord of hosts, the God of Israel : I spake not unto your fathers, nor 
commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of 
Egypt, concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices ; but this thing com- 
manded I them, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be 
my people ; and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, 
that it may be well unto you." Isa. 1 : 11, 16, 17 ; Jer. 7 : 21-23. There 
is something singularly impressive in hearing such emphatic testi- 
monies to the comparative worthlessness of sacrifices and offerings, 
and all merely ritualistic observances, issuing from the heart of the 
old Jewish economy ; spoken at the very time when all those statutes 
and ordinances of the Lord were in full force, that define so minutely 
and prescribe so peremptorily the formalities of Jewish worship. 

Jesus, in quoting one of these testimonies, and applying it to the 
case of his disciples' conduct, puts Sabbath-keeping, so far as it con- 
sisted merely in abstaining from this or that kind of work, in the same 
category as sacrifice, regarding it as part of that formal and external 
mode of honoring and serving the Supreme which ought never to 
stand in the way of any work of need or of benevolence. Had the 
Pharisees but listened to the voice of their own prophets, they would 
have understood this; but, deaf to that voice, they had drawn tighter 
and tighter the bonds of the required Sabbatic service, ever narrow- 
ing the field of what was allowable on the seventh day, till they had 
laid a yoke upon men's shoulders too heavy for them to bear. From 
this yoke, at all hazards to himself, Jesus will relieve his countrymen, 
proclaiming in their ears the great and pregnant truth, "The Sabbath 
was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." The Sabbath is 
but a means to an end; that end is man's present comfort, his spirit- 
ual and eternal good. Wherever, therefore, the keeping of the Sab- 
bath in the way prescribed, instead of promoting, would frustrate that 
end, it was more honored in the breach than in the observance. It 
was never to be regarded as in itself an end. Apart from the phys- 
ical, social, moral, and religious benefits to be thereby realized, there 
was no merit in painfully doing this one thing, or rigorously abstain- 
ing from that other. The Sabbath was made to serve man ; but man 
was not made to serve or to be a slave to the SabbatL And just 



202 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

because it was an institution which, when rightly used, is so emi- 
nently fitted to minister to man's present and eternal good, the Son 
of man, who came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, as 
Head of our humanity, to render to it the greatest of all services, 
and to take all other servants of it under his care and keeping, would 
ihovv himself to be Lord also of the Sabbath. 

It was in this character that Jesus acted on the Sabbath which so 
closely followed the incident of the walk in the cornfields. In some 
unnamed synagogue he sat and taught. A man whose right hand 
was withered stood before him. Had he been brought there to serve 
the purposes of these watchful enemies who wished, not simply to 
have his own acts to bring up against him, (for these, as the acts of 
a prophet, might be regarded as privileged,) but to get from him a 
distinct categorical reply to the question whether it was lawful for 
any man who had the power of healing to exert it on the Sabbath- 
day ? So soon at least as they saw his eye fastened upon the man 
with the withered hand, and before he did any thing, they interpose 
their question, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath-days?" The 
question is met by an appeal to their own practice : " What man 
shall there be among you that shall have one sheep, and if it fall 
into a pit on the Sabbath-day, will he not lay hold on it and lift it 
out ? How much then is a man better than a sheep ! Wherefore it 
is lawful to do well on the Sabbath-days." But they shall not only 
have its lawfulness asserted, they shall see the good done before their 
eyes. Jesus bids the man with the withered hand stand forth. But 
ere he cures him, he turns to the scribes and Pharisees and puts in 
his turn a question cutting deep into their deceitful hearts : " Is it 
lawful to do good on the Sabbath-days," — as I am doing — " or to do 
evil ?" — as y e do in suspecting and maligning me ; — " to save life," — 
as I do — " or to kill," — as ye are doing who are already meditating 
my death ? There is no answer to this question. They stand speech- 
less before him, but unconvinced and unrelenting. 

" And Jesus looked round about on them with anger." The meek 
and the gentle and the patient one ! What was it that filled his 
breast with such a glow of indignation, that it broke out in this 
unwonted look of anger ? It was the sight of men, who, laying hold 
of one of his Father's most merciful institutes — that which for man 
and beast, and the whole laboring creation, provided a day of return- 
ing rest, amid whose quiet the reflecting spirit of man might rise to 
the contemplation of its higher ends and its eternal destiny — instead 
of looking at the primary command to keep holy each seventh day, 
as it stood enshrined among those precepts which enjoined a supreme 



THE CHAKGE OF SABBATH-BREAKING. 203 

love to God and a corresponding love to man, and allowing this me 
positive and external institute to receive its interpretation from those 
immutable moral laws among which it was interposed, had exalted It 
into a place of isolation and false importance, attaching a specific 
virtue to the bare outward keeping of the letter, magnifying to the 
uttermost the minutest acts of bodily service; finding therein the 
materials which the spirit of self-righteousness employed for its own 
low and sordid purposes, an instrument wmich it would have used for 
defrauding the poor and the needy and the diseased of that help 
which the hand of charity was ready to render — such was the source 
of that anger with which Jesus looked round about on the scribes 
and Pharisees. 

But soon his eye, full of the expression of anger as it rests on 
them, becomes as full of pity as it rests on the man who still stands 
expectant before him. Jesus says to him, "Stretch forth thy hand." 
One can fancy the man replying, " Which hand is it that you bid me 
thus stretch forth ? Is it this one that hangs lifeless by my side ? 
Oh, if I but saw its wrinkled flesh filled up, did I but feel restored 
the power that once was in it, most gladly would I do your bidding; 
but mock me not by telling me to stretch forth a hand from which 
you see, and I feel, all power is gone." Had the man thought so. 
spoken so, felt so, he might have carried his withered hand with hint 
to the grave. But he did not so think, or feel, or act. He is spoken 
U by one of whom he believes that he can give the strength to exe- 
cute the command he issues. It is in that faith he acts, and, para- 
doxical as it may seem, let us say, that if in that faith he had not 
made the effort, he never would have got the strength ; and yet if he 
had not got the strength, he never could have made the effort. And 
is it not thus that the divine Kedeemer still addresses us ? Stretch 
forth thy withered heart to love — thy withered hand to serve — such 
is his command. Fixing an eye of faith on him, who has already 
fixed his eye of love on us, let us make the effort, and in the vart 
making cf the effort we shall get the strength. 



204 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 



III. 

The Calling to the Apostolate of St. Peter, JSt 

Andrew, St, James, St. John, and St. Matthew.* 

Extraordinary success naturally excites exaggerated hopes. A 
sudden blaze of prosperity lias blinded the strongest human eye. 
Nor can you point to any great enterprise, signally successful at its 
outset, of which you will not find it true that those engaged in it 
were, for a short time at least, seduced into exorbitant expectations. 
If ever any success might have operated in this way, it was that 
which attended the close of the first year of our Lord's ministry. 
The whole population of Galilee, a community of from two to three 
millions, stirred to its depths — the excitement spreading all around, 
reaching eastward beyond the Jordan, westward to the coasts of Tyre 
and Sidon, southward to the hill country of Judea. It is no longer, 
as in the days that followed the baptism by the banks of the Jordan, 
an obscure Nazarene travelling with a few friends who had attached 
themselves to his person ; it is the great Worker of miracles, the 
Healer of all diseases, the Caster-out of devils, surrounded and 
pressed in upon so closely by admiring and enthusiastic crowds, that 
to get a few quiet hours he had to steal them from sleep — to spend 
them in the mountain solitudes. It is no longer in the synagogue 
and on the Sabbath-days alone that audiences are to be found; every- 
where and at all times assemblages, often too large for his address- 
ing them, are ready to hang upon his lips. But you search in vain 
through all the Avonderful excitement and popularity which followed 
our Lord in his first circuit through Galilee, for the slightest evidence 
that any false or exaggerated expectations were cherished. The spe- 
cious appearances that then surrounded Him never dazzled nor 
deceived his eye. He knew from the beginning hew soon the sudden 
fervors of the first great commotion would subside — how soon the 
tide that swelled so high would ebb away. He knew that had he 
left to themselves those among whom he lived and labored, had he 
done nothing to bind some of them to himself by ties closer and 
stronger than any they spontaneously would have formed, he would 
at the close have been left alone. And therefore it was that at the 
very time when his popularity was at the highest, he took the first 
step towards binding to himself twelve chosen men in links which, 

* Luke 5 : 1-11 ; Matt. 4 : 18—22 ; 9 : 9-17; Mark 1 : 1G-20 ; 2 : 11-22 ; Luke 
5:27-39. 



THE CALLING TO THE APOSTOLATE. iJOG 

lesides all tlie pains that he took himself to forge and fasten them, 
needed the welding forces of the day of Pentecost to make there 
strong enough to bind them everlastingly to him. 

To these twelve men, an office, secondary only to the one he him 
self discharged, was to be assigned. They were always to be with 
him, the spectators and reporters of all he said and did and suffered. 
They were to share and multiply his labors, to protect and relieve 
him from the pressure to which he was exposed. For a short season 
he was to send them from his side, to teach and to work miracles as 
he did himself, that a short fore- trial might be made of the work in 
which they were afterwards to be engaged. After his death they 
were to be the witnesses of the Resurrection, the expounders of that 
gospel which needed the great decease to be accomplished ere in its 
full measure it could be proclaimed. By their hands the foundations 
of the church were to be laid. Let us note, then, the first steps in 
their caUing to this high office. 

On his return from the Temptation, by the banks of the Jordan, 
and on their way thence to Galilee, five men — Andrew, John, Peter; 
Philip, and Nathanael — had temporarily attached themselves to Jesus. 
Of these, only one — Philip — had been called by our Lord himself to 
follow him. The others were attracted by what they heard about 
him or saw in him. At first, however, it was but a loose and uncer 
tain bond that united them to Jesus. All the five were present, we 
may believe, at the marriage feast at Cana, and may have gone up 
with him to Jerusalem, to the first Passover which he attended after 
his baptism. But they did not remain in constant attendance upon 
his person. After his first circuit of Galilee, when his fame was at its 
height, three of them had returned to their ordinary occupation as 
fishermen. With them a fourth became associated. As Andrew had 
brought his brother Peter to Jesus, we may imagine that the same 
service had been rendered by John to his brother James ; so that all 
the four were already well known to Christ, had enjoyed much famil- 
iar intercourse with him, and had appeared often openly as his fol- 
lowers. Perhaps it was the common bond of discipleship to him 
which in the course of the year had drawn them into closer union 
with one another. Peter and Andrew had previously resided at 
Bethsaida, a town at the northeastern extremity of the lake, but they 
had now removed to Capernaum, had entered into partnership with 
the two sons of Zebedee, and had beeu plying their craft together on 
the lake, when all the four were pointedly and specially summoned 
in a way they never before had been to follow the Lord. 

The difficulties that many have felt in harmonizing the narratives 



206 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

in the fourth chapter of St, Matthew and first chapter of St. Mark 
with that in the fifth chapter of St. Luke, have led them to believe 
that two such summonses were given ; that on the first occasion — the 
one referred to by the two former — the four had answered the appeal 
by an immediate throwing up of their occupation by the lake side, 
but that they had again, and not long afterwards, resumed it, requir- 
ing a still more impressive instiTimentahty finally to sever the bonds, 
We are inclined rather to believe that all which the three evangelists 
relate occurred in the course of the same morning, and that it hap- 
pened somewhat in this manner : 

The day had dawned. From his solitary place of rest and prayer, 
somewhere among the neighboring hills, Jesus had come down to the 
quiet beach as the first light of the morning struck across the placid 
bosom of the lake. The unproductive toil of the night was nearly 
over for the fishermen. Out a little distance upon the waters, Peter 
and Andrew had cast in their net for the last time as Jesus approach- 
ed the shore. But his progress was interrupted by the crowds hur- 
rying out of Capernaum, so soon as it was known that he was there. 
Through these crowds — stopping occasionally to address a few words 
to them — Jesus made his way to one or other of those small creeks 
or inlets still to be seen there, where a boat could ride a few feet from 
the shore, and the people, seated on either side and before the speak- 
er, could listen quietly to one addressing them from the boat. Here 
in this creek two boats were drawn up, the property of the four — the 
two pairs of brothers already spoken of. The fishermen had gone 
out of them, and were mending their nets ; not so far away, however, 
but that one of them, Peter, noticing the Lord's approach, had 
returned. Entering into his boat, Jesus asked Peter to thrust out a 
little from the land ; and when this was done, he sat down and taught 
the people out of the boat. The teaching over, Jesus turned to 
Peter, and said to him, "Launch out into the deep, and let down 
your nets for a draught" — a singular command to come from one 
who knew so little — might be supposed to care so little — about the 
fisherman's craft. Still it came so decidedly from one whom Peter 
had already learned to address as Master, that, with a few words of 
explanation, indicative of the smallness of his hope, he prepares to 
comply with it. " Master/' he says, " we have toiled all the night, 
and have taken nothing; nevertheless, at thy word I will let down 
ihe net." He calls his brother, and launches out — lets down the net. 
At once such a multitude of fishes is enclosed that the boat begins to 
fill, the net to break. Excited by what they had seen, James and 
John had by this time launched their boat, and Peter beckons them 



THE CALLING TO THE ATOSTOLATE. 207 

to come and help. They come, "but all the help they can give is 
scarce sufficient. Both boats are filled, and almost sinking as they 
get ashore. 

Peter had already seen Jesus do wonderful things — turn water 
into wine, eject the devil from the demoniac, raise his own wife's 
mother from the fever-bed ; but somehow this wonder came home to 
him as none of them had done — wrought in his own vessel, with his 
own net, in the way of his own calling, after his own fruitless toil. 
Never had the impression of a divine Power at work in his immedi- 
ate presence taken such a hold of him. Never had the sense of hia 
being in close contact with One in whom such power resided come so 
upon his spirit. Astonishment, fear, humiliation— the impression, 
not of his weakness only, but of his sinfulness — of his unworthiness 
to stand in such a presence — fill and overwhelm his open, ardent, 
impressible spirit. He falls at Jesus' knees, as he sat there in the 
boat, quietly watching all the stir and bustle of the fishermen ; and 
he gives vent to the feeling that for a moment is uppermost, as he 
exclaims, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord !" And 
ever still, w'hen the first clear and overpowering revelation is made to 
any man of an Almighty Being compassing his path, besetting him 
before and behind, laying his hand upon him — ever when the first 
true and real contact takes place of the human spirit with the living 
God as the Being with whom we have so closely and constantly to 
do, will something like the same effect be realized. So it was with 
him who said, " I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but 
now mine eye seeth thee ; wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in 
dust and ashes." So it was with him who said, " Woe is me ! for I 
am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst O'f a people of 
unclean lips : for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." 

"Depart from me." Nothing could have surprised Peter more 
than the Lord's taking him at his word — then and for ever after turn- 
ing his back upon him. No man then living would have felt such a 
forsaking more. Wishing to express how unfit he felt himself for such 
a presence, Peter, with his wonted rashness, had said more than he 
really meant. He asks Christ to go, yet he clings to him. "I am a 
sinful man, O Lord." Jesus knows that better than Peter does. 
Peter will know 7 it better when the Lord looks at him in the judg- 
ment-hall, and he goes out to weep over his denials. But Jesus 
knows, also, that it is because he is so sinful a man he must not be 
forsaken. And though he is so sinful a man, yet still he ma.v 1>6 
chosen to stand in closest rehitionship to his Master. "Fear not," 
said Jesus to him: "from henceforth thou shalt catch men.' 1 



208 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

The words of direction, assurance, promise, addressed in the first 
instance to Peter alone, were soon repeated to his three associates. 
The shore was reached, the boats hauled up, the fish disposed of, Jameg 
and John had carried the broken nets away to a little distance to mend 
them, when first to the one pair of brothers, and then to the other, 
Jesus said, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." And 
immediately they left boats and nets, and two of them their father, and 
forsook all, and followed him. We may think it was not much that 
they had to leave, bu! it was their all; and the promptness and en- 
tireness of their relinquishment of it shows what power over them 
the Saviour had already got — what a readiness for service and for 
sacrifice was already in them. And these were the four men who 
ever after stood most closely associated with Jesus— the four who 
stand at the head of every list of the twelve apostles. 

It was not indeed till some time after this that along with the 
other eight, they were set apart to the peculiar office of the aposto- 
late. This calling of them away from their former avocations, this 
attaching of them permanently to his person, was a marked step tow- 
ard their instalment in that position. It was the same with Matthew, 
the publican. The high road from Damascus southward to Judea 
and Egypt ran from the slopes of Mount Hermon down to the north- 
ern extremity of the sea of Galilee, and for a short distance skirted 
along the northwestern shore of the lake, passing through Caper- 
naum. On the side of this road, close to the lake, stood the booth 
in which Matthew sat levying the toll on the passengers and their 
goods. He was one of a hated and degraded class. The payment 
of the taxes exacted by the foreigners under whose rule they were, 
irritated to the last degree the Jews, who regarded it as a visible sign 
and token of their bondage. The strong feeding thus excited spent 
itself on all who had any thing to do with the collection of these 
taxes. No Jew who desired to stand well with his fellow-countrymen 
would be a tax-gatherer. The office was commonly held by foreign- 
ers, or by those who cared but little for a purely Jewish reputation. 
Matthew was a Jew, yet he had become a publican, and now he is 
sit ting at the receipt of custom as Jesus passed by. We know noth- 
ing of his personal character or previous habits. Considering that a 
year at least had passed since Jesus had first appeared as a public 
teacher in Galilee — that so prominent a part of his ministry had been 
conducted in the very neighborhood in which Matthew lived — it may 
be regarded as a violent supposition that there had been no previous 
acquaintance and intercourse between him and our Lord. It would 
be more in keeping with Christ's conduct in other instances to imag- 



THE CALLING TO THE APOSTOLATE. 209 

ine that, so far as his occupation had permitted, Matthew had already 
appeared as the follower of the new teacher, had shown himself to 
have been favorably affected towards him. However it was. Jesus saw 
in him a man who, under right teaching and training, would be wel] 
suited for the high office he intended to confer upon him; and so, 
despite of the invidious office he now held, Jesus stopped as he 
passed by — said, "Follow me;" and "he left all, rose up, and followed 
him," throwing up thus a lucrative engagement, and casting in his 
lot with the small but growing band which Jesus was forming. 

So soon as it was known that a publican had not only been seen 
in the following of Jesus — which might have occurred and occasioned 
no remark — but that Jesus had actually selected a publican and invi- 
ted him to become one of his immediate attendants, a great commo- 
tion among the scribes and Pharisees arose. It was a public scandal, 
an offence against all propriety, that one pretending to be a religious 
guide of the people — one preaching the Kingdom of God — should call 
a publican to his side, and take him into his confidence. Bad enough 
that he should himself be seen breaking the Sabbath and encouraging 
his disciples to do so likewise; but to pass by all the respectable 
inhabitants of Capernaum — so many of whom were conspicuous for 
the strictness of their observance of all the Jewish ordinances — and 
to confer such a mark of favor upon a man with whom none of them 
would associate — what was to be thought of such an act? But the 
worst had not yet come. Either instantly upon his throwing up his 
office, or a few days thereafter, this Matthew makes a feast — a farewell 
one, it would seem — to which a number of his old friends and associ- 
ates were invited, and there Jesus and his disciples were to be seen 
sitting among the other guests. The Pharisees could not stand this. 
They did not venture, indeed, to go and openly reproach Christ per- 
sonally with it. They were smarting too keenly under the recent 
rebuke they had got from him to have courage to do so ; but they go to 
his disciples, and they say to them, "Why eateth your Master with pub- 
licans and sinners?" Jesus does not leave it to the disciples to reply. 
As in so many other instances, he takes the matter into his own 
hands, and, half in irony, half in earnest, he says to them, " They that 
be whole need not a physician, but they that be sick." They thought 
themselves the hale and healthy ; they spake of these publicans and 
sinners as corrupt and diseased; why, then, blame him if he, as the 
great Physician, went where his services were most required? It was 
shiners, not the righteous, that he came to call to repentance. If 
they needed no repentance, why blame him if he went to call those 
whose ears were open to his entreaties? But were they, indeed, so 

Life of GbrUt 14 



210 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

much better than those whom they despised? The difference be- 
tween them was far more an outward, a ceremonial, than an inward, 
a moral, a spiritual one. Many of these poor publicans and sin- 
ners — excommunicated though they might be — very careless about 
religious riles — were men of simpler, truer, more honest natures, 
kindlier in their dispositions, and in a sense, too, more devout, thar 
many of these pretentious pietists. "Go," said Jesus to those who 
imagined themselves to be righteous and despised others — "Go, and 
learn what that meaneth : I will have mercy and not sacrifice " — 
mercy rather than sacrifice if the two be put in comparison; mercy 
alone, and no sacrifice, if the two are put in opposition — mercy among 
publicans and sinners rather than sacrifice or any amount of cere- 
monial observances among scribes and Pharisees. 

But now another class interferes, to make common cause witb 
the Pharisees. Some of the disciples of John the Baptist had early 
seen the superiority of Jesus, and at their master's own instance had 
enrolled themselves among his followers. But others stood aloof, 
having more in them of the old Judaic spirit — attracted as much by 
the ascetic habits of the Baptist as by any thing about him — recog- 
nizing in the fasts that he kept, the prayers that he himself offered 
and taught his disciples to offer, a return to a still purer and stricter 
piety than even that which the Pharisees practised. It was a strange 
and repulsive thing to such, at the very hour when their master was 
cast into prison and they were mourning and fasting more than 
usual on this account, to see Jesus and his disciples going about eat- 
ing and drinking — nay, accepting invitations to festive entertainments 
in publicans' houses. St. Matthew tells us that these disciples of 
John went at once to Jesus with their complaint. St. Mark com- 
pletes the picture by informing us that the Pharisees joined in the 
complaint. Nothing more likely than that when the one saw how 
differently the discipleship of Jesus was developing itself from what 
they had expected, they should rather fall back upon the austerity 
of Pharisaism, with its frequent fastings and many prescribed exer- 
cises of devotion — nothing more natural than that the Pharisees 
should seize upon the occasion and ally themselves "with the followers 
of the Baptist, to aim thereby a fresh blow at Christ's authority and 
influence over the people. Christ's answer meets both sets of com- 
plainers. " And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bride- 
chamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them ? but the 
days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and 
then shall they fast." Matt. 9 : 15. In the last testimony that the 
Baptist had borne to Jesus had he not said, " He that hath the bride 



THE CALLING TO THE APOSTOLATE. 211 

is the budegroani ; but the friend of the bridegroom, which standetb 
and heareth hira, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice." 
The position that John had thus claimed for himself, those disciples 
against whom the complaint was lodged were now occupying. They 
were the friends of the bridegroom — standing and hearing and re- 
joicing — was it a time for them to mourn and to fast ? The days 
were to come when the bridegroom should be taken away from 
them, then should they fast — the fasting flowing spontaneously, 
unbidden, from the grief. There is no general command here pre- 
scribing fasting, but simply a prophecy, referring to a peculiar and 
brief period in the history of the Lord's disciples ; a prophecy, how- 
ever, rich in the intimation it conveys that all external acts and exer- 
cises, such as that of fasting, should spring naturally out of some 
pure and deep emotion of the heart seeking for itself an appropriate 
expression. 

And now two short parables are added by our Lord : the first we 
may regard as peculiarly applicable to the disciples of John, the 
other to the Pharisees. "No man putteth a piece of new cloth 
unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from 
the garment, and the rent is made worse." Matt. 9:16. No man 
would take a piece of new raw cloth, which would not keep its form 
afterwards, which, when wet, would shrink, and sew it into the mut 
oi an old garment ; for ere long, when the new piece put in con- 
tracted, it would tear itself away from the old, and the rent would be 
made worse. And let not the disciples of the Baptist think that this 
new piece of their master's asceticism, with its new fastings and new 
prayers, was to be sewed, as they seemed to wish to do, into the old, 
wornout, rent garment of Pharisaism. To try that would, be to try 
to unite what could not lastingly be conjoined ; instead of closing 
up the rent, it would be to make it wider than ever. "Neither 
do men put new wine into old bottles ; else the bottles break, and 
the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish : but they put new wine 
into new bottles, and both are preserved." Matt. 9:17. No man 
taketh old dry withered skin bottles, such as then were used, and 
filleth them with new wine ; for the new wine would ferment, expand, 
and the bottles be burst, and the wine spilled and lost. And let not 
the Pharisees think that the new wine of the kingdom, the fresh 
spirit of love to God and man, which Jesus came to breathe into 
rf generated humanity, could be safely poured into their old bottles 
-into those forms and ceremonies of worship, dry as dust, and brittle 
as the thinnest and most withered piece of leather. No, there must 
be new bottles for the new wine, bottles that will yield to the pres- 



212 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

sure from within, and expand as the fermenting liquid which they 
eontain expanded. And such new bottles as were thus required 
Jesus was finding — not in priestly men, chained up from childhood 
within priestly habits — not in those fixed and rigid Levitical institu- 
tions which the long years that had been draining them of their 
vitality had been stiffening into an immovable inflexibility : but iu 
these fishermen, these publicans — natural, homely, unlearned men, 
open to imbibe his spirit in all its richness and expansiveness \ 
and in those simple forms and institutions of Christianity, which, 
cramped by no formal and immutable injunctions, were to be left 
free to take such new outward shapes as the indwelling spirit might 
mould. 

These two homely parables of our Lord, so specially adapted as 
they were to the circumstances in which they were uttered — the indi- 
viduals to whom they were addressed — do they not carry with them 
a lesson to all times and ages of Christianity? Do they not remind 
us of the absolute incompatibility of the legal and the evangelical 
obedience — the spirit of the law and the spirit of the gospel ? There 
is a religion, of which the Pharisaism of Christ's days was an exag- 
gerated specimen — the very heart and soul of which consists in pen- 
ances and prayers and fastings — in worship offered, in duties done, 
in sacrifices made, in mortifications inflicted and endured — all to 
soothe an agitated conscience, to win a peace with God, to eke out ft 
hope of heaven. To this the faith that is in Christ our Saviout 
stands directly and diametrically opposed — the one offering as a free 
gift what the other toils after as a reward; the one inviting us to 
begin where the other would have us end; the one putting forgive- 
ness and acceptance with God in our hand and calling upon us, in 
the free spirit of his redeemed, forgiven, adopted children, to live 
and serve and in all things lo submit to our Father which is in 
heaven— the other holding out the forgiveness and the acceptance 
away in the distance,, and calling upon us, in the spirit of bondage, 
to labor all through life for their attainment; the one the old tattered 
garment, the other the piece of new-made cloth. 

And the wine of the kingdom, ever as it pours itself afresh from 
its fountain-head on high into the spirit of man, is it not a new wine 
that needs new bottles to contain it ? If it be indeed the Spirit of 
Christ which is working in hearts that have been opened to receive 
it, may we not safely leave it to its own operation there, and allow it 
to shape the vessel that holds it as it likes? Both, indeed, are 
needed — the outward form, the inner spirit; nor will any wise or 
thoughtful man rashly touch or mould into different shape the first, 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 213 

thinking thereby to improve the second; but neither will he hinder 
nor hamper the second if, by its own proper motion, it is going on 
gently to remould the first. 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 



The Sermon on the Mount may be said to form the point of transi- 
tion from the older order to the new. It is the Magna Charta which 
terminates the era of the outward rites and symbols, which show that 
the members of the kingdom are being dealt with as children or juniors; 
and it ushers in the era of the inward affections and principles, the 
ideals and enthusiasms which belong to the adult sons and daughters of 
God. It is therefore at the same time a proclamation of freedom and 
largeness of life and a requirement of personal loyalty and spirituality. 

The Sermon makes no allusion to the priest and rabbi whose offices 
have been held so important, and the rite of circumcision, hitherto 
counted indispensable to citizenship in the divine commonwealth, is 
not even mentioned. Not outward, ceremonial righteousness and 
acceptance, but inward humility, good-will, and purity, and con- 
sequent blessedness, constitute the gateway into the new fellowship. 
Not obedience to written laws, but embodiment of the heavenly Father's 
spirit, is the condition of abiding membership in the kingdom of grace 
which Christ now establishes. 

The leader can emphasize the point that nowhere during his ministry 
does the divine authority of Christ stand out more clearly than when 
in this great discourse he calls up some of the leading provisions of 
the Mosaic law, shows their inadequacy as universal expressions of 
God's will, and then reissues them stamped with his own inherent 
right to legislate for all mankind through all time in the words solemnly 
reiterated with each enactment: "But I say unto you." 

This legislation of our Lord covers the large fields of the emotions, 
such as anger, and its expression; the element of passion, as capable 
of being inflamed through eye and imagination; marriage and divorce; 
the gift of speech and its profanation in harmful oaths; quarreling 
and revenge, and injuries, as answered by retaliation or overcome by 
forgiveness. The whole delineation of a member of the kingdom as 
to his character or spirit is then summed up in the statement that he 
is to be as complete in showing that love is the dominant principle of 
his being as is God the Father in his bearing toward the children of 
men. 



213a THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Having portrayed in strong lines the general character of the 
members of his kingdom, Jesus proceeds to mark out the fundamental 
features of their practice in their duties toward God and their fellows. 
In contrast with the religious leaders of the time, they are to be free 
from ostentation in their alms, their prayers, and their fasting. They 
are to have such complete faith in God's providential care that they 
will be free from unseemly anxiety. They must not judge their fel- 
lows, and they are to be discreet in speaking of holy things. They 
will be definite and expectant in petitions for God's gifts and follow 
the golden rule in their conduct toward others, watchful against false 
prophets, and zealous in deeds rather than professions in serving their 
Master. 

The author points out that no one should consider that Christ is 
only a moral legislator because he does not here dwell upon his incar- 
nation and coming sacrifice. He speaks here as King, but he is no 
less also Saviour. 



PART II. MAIN MINISTRY IN GALILEE. 
Study 7. Sermon on the Mount. 

(1) Features of the situation related to the sermon 2136-215 

a. The site is the Horns of Hattin or Mount of the Beatitudes. 2136 

6. Christ spends the night in prayer 2136 

c. He then chooses his twelve apostles 2136, 214 

d. He heals those who are brought to him 214 

e. Seated, he gives the sermon 214, 215 

(2) The sermon is concerned with the kingdom of God 215-220 

a. Qualities that render those blessed who are members of the 

kingdom 215, 216 

6. The Mosaic law is not subverted but is reissued by Christ 

with its moral aims made more universal and spiritual. . 216-218 

c. The ideal is likeness in character to God 218 

d. Ostentation, anxiety, and judging others are to be avoided. . 218 

e. There is to be constant and confident use of prayer 219 

/. The golden rule is to govern relations with others 219 

g. To be deaf to false prophets and to hear and do Christ's words 

is to build on the rock 220 

(3) Aspects of the sermon making it effective 220, 221 

a. Simplicity 220 

6. Authority 220 

c. The voice of kingly sacrifice is discernible 221 

d. A humble childlike faith in God is manifested 221 

e. A lofty ideal of heavenly morality is enforced 221 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT 2136 

IV. 

The Sermon on The Mount.* 

The traveller from Jerusalem gets his first sight of the sea of Gal- 
ilee from the top of Mount Tabor. It is but a small corner of the lake 
that he sees, lying miles away, deep sunk among the hills. Descend- 
ing from the height whence this first glimpse of the lake is got, the 
road to Tiberias leads over an elevated undulating plateau, the one 
marked feature of which is a curious double-peaked hill, rising about 
fifty or sixty feet above the general level of the surrounding table- 
land, and sloping down on its eastern side into the plain of Gennesa- 
ret. From the two prominences it presents, this hill is called the 
Horns of Hattin — Hattin being a village at its base. It overlooks 
the lake and the plain. You see Capernaum from its summit, lying 
across the valley about seven miles off. As seen again from Caper- 
naum and the plain, it appears as the highest and loneliest elevation 
that rises upon that side of the lake. It would naturally be spoken 
of by the inhabitants of Capernaum and its neighborhood, even as 
St. Matthew speaks of it, as the mountain. It would naturally be the 
place to which any one seeking for solitude would retire. When 
somewhere in its neighborhood there came around our Lord " a great 
multitude of people out of all Judea and Jerusalem, and from the sea- 
coast of Tyre and Sidon, and from Galilee and Decapolis, and from 
Idumea and from beyond Jordan," (Luke 6 : 17 ; Mark 3:8; Matt. 
4 : 25,) and when, seeking relief from the pressure, it is said that he 
went up into a mountain, no one so likely to be the one referred to 
by the evangelist as the Horns of Hattin — to which, as the supposed 
place of their utterance, the name of the Mount of the Beatitudes has 
for ages been given. 

The night upon this mountain was spent by Christ in prayer — 
alone perhaps upon the higher summit, the disciples slumbering be- 
low. At dawn he called them to him, and out of them he chose the 
twelve and ordained thom, " that they might be with him, and that 
ka lixight send them forth to preach." But on what principle was the 
selection made? in what manner was the ordination effected? II 
* MaLtt. chaps. 5, 6, 7 ; Luke 6 : 20-4-9. 



214 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

may be presumed that some regard was had to the personal qualified* 
tions of those whom the Lord chose for this high office. We know 
indeed too little of any but two or three of the twelve to trace the 
special fitness of the human instrument for the work given it to do, 
Of all but one, however, we may believe that such fitness did exist 
But how came that one to be numbered with the rest? It is possible 
that Judas may have done much to obtrude himself, or that others 
may have done much to obtrude him upon the notice of the Saviour. 
We read of one who, with great professions of attachment, volunteered 
to become a disciple, saying to Jesus, " Master, I will follow thee 
whithersoever thou goest;" whom Jesus neither rejected nor wel- 
comed, meeting his declaration of adherence with the ominous words, 
"The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the 
Son of man hath not where to lay his head." If, as some have 
thought, the man who came forward in this way and pressed himself 
into the discipleship was Judas — if he was a man of acknowledged 
ability and considerable influence, whom no one at the time had the 
slightest reason to suspect, who was welcomed by all the other disci- 
ples, and commended by them to their Master as a most desirable 
associate — if the rejection of such a man in such circumstances would 
have seemed to be an act of caprice without known or apparent rea- 
son, this might serve perhaps in some slight degree to explain to us 
how Judas came at first to be numbered with the twelve. Many will 
feel as if there were something like profanity in any conjecture of this 
kind, and all will be satisfied simply to accept the fact that Jesus 
chose those twelve men, and yet that one of them was a devil. 

Was it by simple designation to the office without any form or 
ceremony? or was it by laying of Christ's hand solemnly on the head 
of each, then gathering the circle round him and offering up a conse- 
cration prayer, that the apostles were set apart ? We cannot tell. It 
is surely singular, however, that the manner of the ordination of the 
apostles by our Lord himself, in like manner as the ordination of the 
first presbyters or bishops of the church by the apostles, should have 
been left unnoticed and undescribed. 

The ordination over, Jesus descended to a level spot, either be- 
tween the two summits or lying at their base. Luke 6 : 17. The day 
had now advanced, and the great multitude that had followed him, 
apprised of his place of retreat, poured in upon him, bringing their 
diseased along with them. He stood for a time healing all who were 
brought to him. Retreating then again to the mountain side, he sal 
down. His disciples seated themselves immediately around him, 
and the great multitude stood or sat upon the level ground below. 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 215 

Such were the circumstances under which the Sermon on the 
Mount was delivered. It may have been the first discourse of the 
kind which St. Matthew had heard ; all the more natural, theret'ore 9 
that he should have been directed to preserve so full a record of it. 
We have no authority for saying that it was actually the first formal 
and lengthened address delivered by our Lord. Many other longer 
or shorter discourses, to smaller or larger audiences, may Jesus have 
spoken during this period of his ministry. But this was the one 
selected by Divine Wisdom to be presented as a specimen or sample 
of our Lord's teaching, as addressed to mixed Galilean audiences in 
the earlier stages of his ministry. There was a change in his mode 
of teaching afterwards, even in Galilee, as there was a marked dif- 
ference between all his discourses there and those addressed to very 
different audiences in Jerusalem. Here upon the mount he had a 
vast concourse of people of all castes and from all quarters before 
him. Nearest to him were his own disciples. To them his words 
were in the first instance spoken, but they were meant to reach the 
consciences and hearts of the motley crowd that lay beyond. 

Now, if there was one sentiment spread more widely than another 
throughout this crowd, it was the vague yet ardent expectation beat- 
ing then in almost every Jewish breast, of some great national deliv- 
erance — of the near approach of a new kingdom — the kingdom of 
God. Of this kingdom they had no higher conception than that it 
would be a free and independent outward and visible Jewish mon- 
archy. And when it came, then should come the days of liberty and 
peace, of honor and triumph, and all kinds of blessedness for poor 
oppressed Judea. With what a delicate hand — not openly and rudely 
rebuking, yet laying the axe withal at its very roots — was this deep 
national prejudice now treated by our Lord. What could have run 
more directly counter to the earthly ambitious hopes, swelling up 
within the hearts of those around him? what could have served more 
effectually to check them, than the very first words which Jesus 
uttered? "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom 
of heaven. Blessed a/re they that mourn : for they shall be comfort- 
ed. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed 
are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness : for they 
shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful : for they shall obtain mercy. 
Blessed are the pure in heart ; for they shall see God. Blessed are 
ihe peacemakers : for they shall be called the children of God. Bless- 
ed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake : for theirs is 
the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, 
and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you 






216 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is 
your reward in heaven : for so persecuted they the prophets which 
were before you." How different the kind of blessedness thus 
described from that which his hearers had been hungering and 
thirsting after. How different the kind of kingdom thus described 
from that which they had been expecting he would set up. And, 
apart from their special use and immediate service as addressed of 
old to the Galilean audience, these beatitudes remain to teach us 
wherein the only true, pure, lasting blessedness for man consists; 
not in any thing outward, not in the gratification of any of our natu- 
ral passions or desires, our covetousness, or our pride, or our ambi- 
tion, or our love of pleasure; not in what we have, but in what we 
are in God's sight and in relation to his empire over our souls. The 
poor in spirit, those most deeply conscious of their spiritual poverty, 
their want of that which can alone find favor with God ; the mourn- 
ers whose grief is the fruit of guilt and unworthiness realized and 
deeply felt; the meek, who bow patiently and submissively to every 
stroke, whoever be the smiter; the hungerers and thirsters after 
righteousness, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted for 
righteousness' sake — do we regard these as the happiest of our race? 
is theirs the kind of happiness upon which our heart is chiefly set, 
and which we are laboring with our utmost efforts to realize ? If not, 
however ready we may be to extol the pure and high morality of the 
Sermon on the Mount, we have failed to take in the first and one of 
the greatest truths which it conveys, as to the source, and seat, and 
character, and conditions of the only abiding and indestructible 
blessedness of sinful man. 

But while the multitude were cherishing false ideas and expecta- 
tions about his kingdom, many were cherishing false ideas and fears 
about Christ himself that equally required to be removed. They had 
noticed in his teaching the absence of any reference to many of those 
religious services that they had so punctiliously performed, some dis- 
regard of them in his own practice and in that of his disciples. " This 
man," they began to say, " is an enemy to Moses. He is aiming at 
nothing short of a subversion of the old, the heaven-given law." 
Jesus must proclaim how untrue the accusation was. " Think not," 
he said, " that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets : I am 
not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till 
heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from 
the law, till all be fulfilled." But in what did the true fulfilment of 
the Mosaic law consist ? It was a vast and complicated code, em- 
bracing a body of laws for a peculiar people, existing at a particular 



THE SEEMON ON THE MOUNT. 217 

period, and organised for a special purpose ; subject, therefore, to all 
the limitations and exhibiting all the adaptations to existing circum- 
stances which, in proportion to the wisdom with which it is framed, 
all such legislation must display. It had in it commands of a purely 
ethical and religious character, conveyed in more general and abstract 
forms ; and it had in it a large apparatus of positive enactments and 
ordinances chiefly meant to symbolize the truths and facts of the 
Christian dispensation. It was not throughout an expression of 
God's absolute will, perfect, immutable, meant to be of permanent and 
universal obligation. Part of it, perfectly adapted to its design, was 
inherently imperfect; part of it as necessarily transitory. When the 
time came that the Jewish nation should either cease to exist or 
cease to have its old functions to discharge, and when all its types 
and ceremonies had their true meaning expressed and their ends 
accomplished; thpn out of this complicated law there would come to 
be extracted that which was absolutely perfect and universally oblig- 
atory. Jesus knew that at his advent that time had come, and 
assuming the very place and exercising the very prerogative of the 
divine legislator of the Jews, he begins in this Sermon on the Mount 
to execute this task. He treats the old Jewish practice of divorce as 
imperfect, being adapted to a single nation at a particular stage of 
its moral training, and lays down the original and perfect law of the 
marriage relationship. In like manner he deals with the lex lalionis— 
the rule of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and with the 
law and custom as to oaths. But it is especially in his treatment of 
those commandments about whose permanent obligation there was 
and could be no doubt, that the novelty and value of his teaching 
displayed itself. These were negative and prohibitory in their form. 
" Thou shalt not kill/ ' " Thou shalt not commit adultery," etc. They 
had been looked at in the letter rather than in the spirit. They had 
been regarded simply as prohibitions of certain outward acts or 
crimes. Abstinence from the forbidden deeds had been taken as a 
keeping of the Divine commands. Obedience had thus come to be 
looked upon as a thing of outward constraint or mechanical con- 
formity, its merit lying in the force of the constraint, the exactness of 
the conformity. It was thus that the righteousness of the scribes 
and Phari^es consisted mainly in a stiff and formal adherence to the 
letter of the precept, to the neglect often and sometimes to the con- 
tradiction of its spirit. This fatal error Christ exposes, taking up 
«ommandmeRt after coinmandineni, unfolding the spirituality and 
extent of the requirement, showing how it reached not simply 01 
m-ainly to the regulation of the outward conduct, but primarily and 



218 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

above all things to ike state of the heart; that murder lay in embryc 
in an angry feeling; that adultery lurked in a licentious look; that ii 
was not alone when the name of God was vainly used that irrever- 
ence might be exhibited and profane swearing practised ; that the 
old Jewish rule of retaliation was no rule for the regulation of the 
Affections or the guidance of the conduct in a pure and perfect state ; 
that from the heart every sentiment of malice or revenge must bo 
banished, and in the conduct the evil done to us by another remain 
unresented, unavenged, the enemy to be loved, the persecutor to be 
prayed for; and all this done that we might be merciful as our Father 
that is in heaven is merciful, perfect as he is perfect, children of him 
who maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth 
his rain on the just and on the unjust. 

This end and aim of being like to, of being imitators of God, was 
one too pure, too high, too holy, to suffer corruption and the worm 
to enter into it by admixture with the selfish and ignoble motive of 
courting human approval, winning human applause. Too much of 
the almsgiving and the fasting and the praying that he saw practised 
around him was done to be seen of men — prompted by no other mo 
tive — was nothing but hypocrisy, utterly offensive to his Father in 
heaven. Concealed and unostentatious let the givings and the fast- 
ings be, short and simple and secret the prayers of those who would 
be his disciples and true children of his Father, whom seeing in secret 
he would in due time openly reward. 

Let all be done as unto him with an undivided allegiance, for no 
man can serve two masters : and with an unbounded trust, for, hav- 
ing such a Father, why should there be any over-carefulness for 
earthly things — those things that He knows we have need of, or any 
undue concern about a future which is not ours but his ? Why so 
anxious about food and raiment ? It is God who sustains the life of 
the body; you must trust him for that, the greater thing: then why 
distrust him for the less ? Behold the fowls of the air ; consider the 
lilies of the field ; look at the grass that grows beneath your feet. 
Not theirs, as yours, the capacity for trust and toil and foresight. A 
worthless, fleeting existence theirs as compared with yours ; yet see how 
they are not only cared for, but lavishly adorned. " Take,' therefore, 
no thought for the morrow : for the morrow shall take thought for 
the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. But 
geek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness ; and all these 
things shall be added unto you." 

Conscious of your own far shortcomings from that perfect confi- 
dence you should cherish, that constant service you should be rets- 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 219 

dering, be not severe in criticising or condemning others. Judge 
not, that ye be not judged. " Why beholdest thou the mote that is 
in thy brother's eye, and considerest not the beam that is in thine 
own eye ? Thou hypocrite ; first cast out the beam out of thine own 
eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy 
brother's eye." 

It may be very difficult to be all, to do all that I am now telling 
you you ought to be and to do ; but is there not an open and effectual 
way for having every felt spiritual want relieved ? " Ask, and it shall 
be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened 
unto you." " If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your 
children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give 
good things to them that ask him?" 

Drawing from the exhaustless fountain of grace and strength that 
in him is opened to you, fear not to adopt this as the one comprehen- 
sive rule of your whole bearing and conduct toward others: "All 
things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even 
so to them ; for this is the law and the prophets." 

Bet'ore the days of Christ there was a great Jewish teacher, Hill el. 
An inquirer once came to him asking the strange question: "Can you 
teach one the whole law during the time that I am able to stand on 
one foot?" "Yes," said Hillel, "it is contained in this one rule: 
Whatsoever ye would not wish that your neighbor should do to you, 
do it not to him." This and other sayings of preceding rabbis have 
been quoted with a view of detracting somewhat from the originality 
of the moral teaching of Christ. Yet even here, while the resem- 
blance between the lessons taught is so marked, one grand difference 
maj 7 be discerned — a difference that runs through so large a part of 
the Saviour's precepts as compared with those of all other moral legis- 
lators. He translates the negative into the positive. With him it is 
not — be not, do not ; but, be and do. In few instances are any spe- 
cific rules of conduct laid down. To plant the right spirit and motive 
in the heart, out of which all true morality proceeds, is the great 
object He aims at. 'Look up to God,' he says to us, 'as indeed your 
Father — ever living, ever loving, patiently bearing with you, largely 
providing for you, willing to forgive you. Walk humbly, meekly, trust- 
ingly before him. Commit your way to him, cast all your care on him, 
seek all your supplies from him, render all your returns to him. Look 
upon all your felloAV-men as children of the same Father, members 
of the same family. Love each other, and live together as brethren, 
bearing yourselves towards all around you patiently, forgivingly, gen- 
erously, hopefully. The gate thus opened is strait, the way is narrow, 



220 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

but it is the only one that leadeth unto life. An I, finally, lemembei 
that it is practice, not profession, that can alone conduct you along 
the path to the throne in heaven. Hear then, and do, that ye may be 
like the wise man who built his house upon a rock, "and the rain 
descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon 
that house, and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock.'" 

Such is a rapid, imperfect sketch of the Sermon on the Mount, 
regarded mainly from an historical point of view, in its bearings upon 
the audience to which it was originally addressed. The people who 
first heard it, we are told, were astonished at its doctrine. Well they 
might be. It was so different from what they had been accustomed 
to. No labored argument, no profound discussion, no doubtful dis- 
putation, no nice distinctions, no scheme of doctrines formally and 
elaborately propounded, no exact routine of religious services pre- 
scribed. It dealt with the simplest, plainest moral and religious 
truths and duties; and did this in the simplest, plainest manner; 
directly, familiarly, colloquially — a freshness about it like that of the 
morning breeze which played over the mountain side. The thing, 
however, that seems to have struck the listeners most, was the calm, 
unhesitating, authoritative tone in which the whole was uttered. 
"They were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one 
h aving authority, and not as the scribes." Here is One who comes 
forth from none of the great schools — who has sat at the feet of none 
of the great masters — who uses no book language — who appeals to 
no authority but his own — a young untaught Nazarene ; and yet he 
takes it upon him to pronounce with the utmost confidence as to who 
the truly blessed are, and reckons among them those who were to be 
railed at and persecuted for his sake. Here is One who does not 
shrink from taking into his hands the law and the prophets, acting 
not simply as their expositor — the clearer of them from all false tra- 
ditional interpretations. He is bold enough to say that he came to 
fulfil them; in one remarkable instance, at least — that of the law 
which permitted divorce — speaking as the original lawgiver was alone 
entitled to do, declaring that the time for this permission had now 
ceased, and that henceforth such divorces as Moses had tolerated 
were not to be allowed. Here is One who speaks of God as one who 
fully knew and had a right to declare how his children were to act so 
as to please him ; whom he would forgive, whom he would reward, 
upon whom he would bestow his gifts. Here is One who, though 
seated on that Galilean mountain, with nothing to distinguish him 
from the humble fishermen around him, speaks of a day on which he 
should be seated on the throne of universal judgment, to whom many 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT 221 

should say, " Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name ? and 
in thy name have cast out devils ? and in thy name done many won- 
derful works?" — to whom he was to reply, "I never knew you: depart 
from me, ye that work iniquity." 

In consequence of the simplicity, purity, and elevation of the 
moral precepts which it contains, and still more, perhaps, because of 
none of the peculiar doctrines as to the person, character, office, and 
work of Christ as the Mediator being found in it, this Sermon on the 
Mount has been greedily seized upon and highly extolled by many as 
the true epitome of Christianity — as Christ's own gospel coming from 
his own lips. But it is far less difficult for us to discern the reasons 
why the truths of the incarnation and the propitiatory sacrifice were 
not at this time and to that audience alluded to or dwelt upon by 
Jesus, than it is for any who would reduce him to the level of a mere 
moral legislator to account for the position which, even when enunci- 
ating the simplest moral precepts, he assumed — for the tone of author- 
ity in which he speaks. Dimly, indeed, through this Sermon on the 
Mount does the Jesus of the cross appear, but the Jesus of the throne 
is here, and once that we have learned from other after-teachings of 
himself and his apostles to know and love and trust in him as our 
great High Priest, who has bought us with his blood, it will be the 
habit and delight of every true and faithful follower of his to take up 
and dwell upon that wonderful discourse, in which, more clearly and 
fully than in any other words of human speech, the very spirit and 
essence of a humble, child-like faith in God, and the lofty ideal of a 
perfect, a heavenly morality, are unfolded and enforced. 



221a THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 

The present Study embraces an unusual number of events in our 
Lord's public ministry. Two out of his three recorded cases of raising 
the dead are covered, and the idea is unfolded by Dr. Hanna, on page 
227, that these two along with the case of Lazarus form a series as to 
the time elapsing between the expiration of life and its restoration. 

In this study the growing opposition of the Pharisees to Christ 
as working miracles and kindling the faith of the people reaches a crisis. 
They seek to charge him before the people with performing his work 
of casting out devils through Beelzebub the prince of the devils; and 
he, on the other hand, proves that such an explanation is impossible, 
and warns his enemies that they are in danger of committing an unpar- 
donable sin. 

It is here also that the family of Christ seek an interview with him 
apparently as if they would try to restrain him, and that he makes the 
declaration that whosoever does the will of his Father in heaven is 
his brother and sister and mother. 

During this period, Christ introduces his new method of teaching 
in parables which has the twofold advantage of concealing the inner 
message from those who are hostile to the truth and of revealing it 
to those who welcome it as friends. 



PART II. MAIN MINISTRY IN GALILEE. 
Study 8. More Miracles and Beginning of Parables. 

(1) Raising the widow's son 2216-230 

a. Journey from Capernaum to Nain 222 

b. Christ's compassion and deed of power 222, 223 

c. General considerations on the event 227-230 

(2) Healing of woman with issue of blood 224, 225 

a. Her desire to be secretly healed and touching of Christ's 

garment 224 

b. Christ causes her to acknowledge her cure and comforts her. . 224, 225 

(3) Raising of Jairus' daughter 223-230 

a. Jesus responds to the call of Jairus 223-226 

b. Peter, James, John, and parents as witnesses 226 

c. The maiden is restored to lif e 226 

d. General consideration on three cases of resurrection 227-230 



THE RAISING OF THE WIDOW'S SON. 2216 

(4) Embassy from John the Baptist 230-233 

a. Reasons why John should feel a measure of doubt 230-231 

b. Christ's answer and subsequent tribute to John 231-233 

(5) Woes incurred by cities in rejecting Christ's ministry 234-236 

(6) Invitation to come unto him and find rest j. 236-242 

(7) Simon the Pharisee and the sinful woman 243-250 

a. Christ dining with Simon is anointed by the woman 243-245 

b. Christ's parable of the two debtors, and words to Simon and 

the woman 246-250 

(8) Increasing opposition of the Pharisees to Jesus 250-255 

a. They claim he casts out devils through Beelzebub 250-252 

b. Jesus answers their charge and warns them 252-255 

(9) Christ's mother and brethren seek to interpose 255, 256 

(10) Introduction of Christ's teaching in parables 257-261 

a. Parables of the sower, the wheat and tares, the mustard- 

seed, the leaven, and the seed growing secretly 258 

b. Parables of the hidden treasure, the pearl of great price, and 

the draw-net, spoken later 261 

c. General purpose in the use of parables 258-261 

(11) Christ stills the tempest in crossing the Sea of Galilee 261-263 

(12) Cure of the demoniac 263-267 

a. Jesus confronts this desperate case on the eastern shore and 

casts out the evil spirits 263 

b. They enter into the herd of swine and work its destruction .... 264 

c. The mysterious conflict between good and evil 264-267 



The Raising of the Widow's Son and the Ruler's 

Daughter.* 

The multitude that listened to the Sermon on the Mount followed 
Jesus from the hill-side into Capernaum, thronging round the house 
into which he entered, and pressing their sick so urgently on his 
notice that he " could not so much as eat bread." A mode of life 
like this — out all night upon the mountain-top, teaching, walking, 
working all day long without food or rest — so affected the minds of 
his immediate relatives when they heard of it, that they " went out 

* Luke 7 : 11-17 ; 8 : 41-^6 ; Matt. 9 : 18-26 ; Mark 5 : 22-43. 



222 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

to lay liold of him, for they said, He is beside himself." Failing in 
their endeavors, tliey left him to pursue his eccentric course. 

It was in the course of the busy day which followed the delivery 
of the Sermon on the Mount that the centurion's servant was healed, 
and the opportunity was thereby given to Jesus to hold up to the 
eyes of the people an example of such faith as he had not found — 
no, uot in Israel. On the following day he left Capernaum. " Many 
of his disciples and much people " went with him. They had a long 
day's walk over the hills of Galilee, skirting the base of Tabor, and 
descending into the plain of Esdraelon. The sun was sinking in the 
west, away behind the ridge of Carmel, and was gilding with his 
evening beams the slopes of little Hermon, as Jesus and the band 
which followed him approached the village of Nain. This village is 
now a confused heap of the rudest Syrian huts, unenclosed, with no 
ruins of ancient buildings, nor any antiquities around, save the tombs 
in the rock upon the hill-side, where for ages they have buried 
the dead. And yet it stands next to Nazareth and Bethlehem and 
Bethany in the sacred interest attached to it. We are so sure of its 
identity, it is so small, so isolated, having nothing but the one won- 
derful incident to mark its history, that the Saviour's living presence 
was almost as vividly realized by us when entering it as when we sat 
by the side of Jacob's well. We stood at the end of the village 
which looks northward towards Galilee, and tried to recall the scene. 
Jesus and his train of followers have crossed the plain, and are draw- 
ing near to the village. Another company moves slowly and sadly 
out of its gate and meets them. It is a funeral procession ; a large 
one, for all the villagers have come forth ; but there is no mark or 
token that it is the funeral of one who had been rich or in any way 
distinguished. The bier is of the plainest, and there follows it as 
chief mourner a solitary woman, clad in humblest guise. Jesus has 
none beside him, as he stops and looks, to tell him who this woman 
is — who the dead for whom she mourns. He does not need the 
information ; he knows her history ; he knows her grief better than 
any inhabitant of Nain. To his eye it is a becoming and beautiful 
thing that grief like hers should have such homage paid to it, should 
have drawn the whole village out after her by the pure force of sym- 
pathy. Her claim, indeed, upon that sympathy is strong. This is 
not the first bier she has followed. She had wept for another before 
she wept for him whom they are now carrying to the grave. She is 
<* widow — weeping now behind the bier of her only son. Bereft of 
every earthly stay she walks, a picture of perfect desolation. 

" And when the Lord saw her he had compassion on her." As 



THE RAISING OF THE WIDOW'S SON. 223 

soon as his eye rests on her his heart fills full of pity. Was this 
the first funeral he had ever met by the wayside along with his dis- 
ciples ? Was this the first mourner he had ever noticed go weeping 
thus behind the dead ? It may not have been so ; yet never perhaps 
before had he seen a poor lone widowed mother shed such bitter 
tears over the death of an only son. The sight moves him at leas! 
to do what he had never done before. He goes up to the woman, and 
says to her " Weep not." Wrapped up in her consuming grief, how 
surprised she must have been at being accosted in such a way at 
such a time. Does this stranger mean to mock her, to deal rudely 
with her in her grief. In any other she might have been ready to 
repel and resent the unseasonable intrusion — the strange unreason- 
able speech ; but there is something in the loving, pitying eye that 
looks at her as she glances at him timidly through her tears — some- 
thing of hope, of promise, of assurance in the gentle yet authorita- 
tive tones of his voice that quenches all disposition to repel or 
resent. But why does Christ first say to her, " Weep not" ? Does he 
not know what he is about to do ? Does he not know that within a 
few minutes that will be done by him which, without any bidding on 
his part, will dry up all her tears ? He does ; but he cannot go for- 
ward to his great act without yielding to the impulse of pity ; drop- 
ping into the ear of the mourner, not as a cold word of command, 
fitted only to give needless pain, but as a spontaneous expression of 
his warm personal compassion — the words, "Weep not." Such a 
preface to the miracle speaks to us as plainly of the tenderness of 
Christ's sympathy as the miracle itself proclaims the infinitude of his 
power. 

" And he came and touched the bier, and they that bore him stood 
still." And all stand as still as the bearers ; the two groups, the one 
from Capernaum and the other from Nain, lost in wonder as to what is 
to happen next. All eyes turn upon Jesus. His turn upon the bier. 
The silence is broken by the simple majestic words, " Young man, I 
say unto thee, Arise." The young man rises, looks about -with won- 
der, and begins to speak. Jesus takes him by the hand, lifts him 
from the bier, delivers him to his mother. The deed of mercy is 
done, and nothing more is told, but that a great fear came upon 
all. "And they glorified God, saying, That a great prophet is 
risen up among us ; and, That God hath visited his people. And 
this rumor of him went forth throughout all Judea, and throughout 
all the region round about." 

It was a few days or weeks before or after this incident (for the 
date is uncertain) that one of the rulers of the synagogue at Capev- 



THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

nauni, Jairus by name, came to Jesus as lie sat at meat in the house 
of Levi, and " cast himself at his feet, and worshipped him, and be- 
sought him greatly, saying, My little daughter lieth at the point oi 
death; come and lay thy hands upon her, that she may be healed, 
and she shall live." Jesus arose at once and went with Jairus ; so 
did his disciples, and so did much people; the very promptness of 
Christ's compliance with the ruler's request stimulating their curios- 
ity. The distance could not have been great from the house of Levi 
to that of Jairus, and might have speedily been traversed, but the 
crowd that thronged around Jesus by the way somewhat impeded 
the movement. It gave, however, to one poor woman the opportu- 
nity she had long been seeking. Twelve long years she had been f\ 
sufferer, her illness one that made her very touch pollution. All she 
had she had spent upon physicians. It seemed rather to have aggra- 
vated her complaint. Seeing or hearing about Jesus, a belief in the 
healing virtue that lay in him had taken possession of her mind. 
Her timidity, her sense of shame, kept her from going openly to him, 
telling him of her malady, and asking him to exert his power on her 
behalf. But if she could in any way unseen get at him, if she could 
but touch his clothes, she felt that she should be made whole. And 
now he goes through this great crowd. It is the very occasion she 
has been seeking f®r, and she seizes it; gets behind him, presses 
through the people, and touches the hem of his outer garment. She 
is instantly healed, but as instantly arrested. The touch has scarce 
been given, the healing scarce effected, when Jesus turns round and 
says, "Who touched my clothes?" They all deny the deed. Peter 
expostulates with his Master. "The multitude," he says, "throng 
thee and press thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me?" Jesus 
knows as well as Peter that many had been near enough for their and 
his garments to have come into contact; but he knows, too, as Peter 
knew not, that there had been a touch with a distinct, deliberate pur- 
pose, altogether different from that of a mere random contact, a touch 
that had drawn virtue out of him. Who gave it? His eye looked 
round to see, is already resting on the woman, who, seeing that she 
is not hid, fearing and trembling, yet glad and grateful, throws her- 
self on her knees before him, and getting the better of all her 
womanly feelings, declares unto him "before all the people for what 
<muse she had touched him, and how she was healed immediately." 

Had Jesus been displeased at being touched ? Had he grudged 
tn any way that the virtue had in such a way been extracted ? Was 
it to detect and rebuke a culprit that he had challenged the multi- 
tude ? No : it was because he knew how very strong was this worn- 






THE RAISING OF THE RULER'S DAUGHTER. 225 

bii's faith — a faith, sufficient to draw out at once in fullest measure 
the healing efficacy, and yet a faith that had in it a superstitious ele- 
ment, the fancy that in some magical mysterious way contact of any 
kind established between her and Christ would cure her. If he allow- 
ed her to go away undetected, the healing filched, as it were, uncon- 
sciously from the healer, this fancy might be confirmed, the supersti- 
tious element in her faith enhanced. Therefore it was that he would 
not suffer the secrecy. He would meet and answer the faith which 
under the heavy pressure and in despair of all other help had thrown 
itself somewhat blindly yet confidingly upon his aid. But he will not 
allow her to depart without letting her know how wrong and how 
needless it had been in her to attempt concealment, without letting 
her and all around her know what was the kind of touch that she had 
given which had established the right connection between her and 
him, and opened the way for the remedy reaching the disease. "And 
he said unto her, Daughter, be of good comfort ; thy faith hath made 
thee whole, go in peace." 

There is not one of all our Saviour's many miracles of healing 
fuller of comfort and encouragement. For if his mode of dealing 
with our spiritual diseases be shadowed out in the modes of the 
bodily cures that he effected, whenever we grow sad or despondent 
as we think how much of fear, or shame, or error, or weakness, or 
superstition mingles with the faith we cherish, then let us remember 
that if only the depth and inveteracy of the spiritual disease be felt, 
if with or without a long trial of them we have been led to despair of 
all other physicians of the soul, and to look alone to Jesus Christ, he 
who accepted this woman's faith with all its weakening and defiling 
ingredients, will not cast us off. A timid trembling touch of him, be 
it only the touch of humility and trust, will still bring forth that heal- 
ing virtue which wraps itself up in no guarded seclusion, but delights 
to pour itself freely out into every open and empty receptacle that is 
brought to it. 

The stoppage by the way, however brief, must have been some- 
what trying to Jairus, but he showed no impatience. There was a 
short delay, but with it a new proof of Christ's power well fitted to 
fortify his faith. But just as the healed woman is sent away, the 
messenger arrives, who says, " Thy daughter is dead, why troublest 
thou the Master any further?" The words were perhaps not meant 
for the ear of Christ, yet it caught them up, and the moment it did 
so, knowing and feeling to what a strain the faith of Jairus was 
exposed, and how much he needed to be assured and comforted, " as 
soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith to the ruler 

J,ffe of Christ. 15 



226 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe." Jairus hears the 
reassuring words, and, heedless of the suggestion made, follows Jesus 
as before. 

At last the house of the dead is reached. Jesus suffers none pf 
his followers to enter with him save Peter, James, and John, the 
three privileged apostles who were with him on the mount of his 
transfiguration and in the garden of his agony, the three chosen wit- 
nesses of the highest exercise of his power, the fullest display of his 
glory, the greatest depth of his sorrow. The first apartment of the 
ruler's house is occupied by those who fill it with a perfect tumult 
of bemoaning sounds. It was the custom to hire such mourners on 
these occasions — the more numerous, the more vehement, the higher 
the station of the family. The outward demonstration of grief that 
they here make is excessive, but there is no heart in all the sound 
and show, no true utterance of any real sorrow. As at discord at 
once with his own feeling and with his formed purpose, Jesus rebukes 
the wailers, and says to them, " Give place ; why make ye this ado ? 
the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth." Not dead ? Can they, the 
hired officials, not tell the difference between sleep and death ? Who 
is he that speaks to them so slightingly, so authoritatively taking it 
on him, stranger though he be, to stop their lamentations? They 
" laugh him to scorn :" this real laughter still more incongruous with 
his presence and his purpose than the feigned grief. With Jairus to 
second him, Jesus puts all the people out, takes " the father and the 
mother of the damsel, and them that were with him, and entereth in 
where the damsel was lying." He takes the dead child by the hand, 
simply says, " Talitha cumi — damsel, arise !" and she rises, weak as 
from a bed of illness, yet with all the seeds of the mortal malady 
which had laid her low banished from her frame. Having directed 
that some food should be given her, Jesus straitly charged the 
parents that they should tell no man; an injunction, let us believe, 
that they did their best to keep, and yet St. Matthew tells us "the 
fame thereof went abroad into all that land." 

It is difficult to understand why it was that Jesus laid such a strin- 
gent injunction of secrecy upon the parents in this instance. Had 
the widow's son not been raised from the dead about the same time, 
and in circumstances of the utmost publicity, we might have ima* 
gined that there was a desire on the part of Christ to throw, for a 
time at least, a veil over this particular form of the manifestation of 
his power. But though that other miracle had not been wrought, 
had this one stood alona how could it be hidden ? There were too 
many that had seen the damsel die, or mourned over her when dead, 



THE RAISING OF THE RULER'S DAUGHTER. 227 

to allow of any concealment. As we think of the difficulty, we might 
almost say impossibility, of such concealment, the thought occurs— 
and other instances in which the same command was given by Christ 
may in the same way be explained — that it was not so much with 
any desire or intention to secure secresy that the order was issued, 
as to prevent those who had the closest personal interest in the mir- 
acle being the first or the loudest in noising it abroad. 

There does not seem to have been any previous acquaintance 
between Christ and the widow of Nain. It may be doubted whether 
she had ever seen Jesus till she met him as she was going out to bury 
her son. We do not read of Jesus ever being in Nain but on that one 
occasion. It lay beyond the line of those circuits of Galilee which he 
was in the habit of making. We are not surprised, therefore, at 
noticing that his interference there was voluntary, without any solici- 
tation or hope entertained beforehand on the part of the mourner. 
It was different with Jairus at Capernaum. He was a well-known 
man, living in the town which Jesus had chosen as his headquarters 
in Galilee. In all likelihood he was one of the rulers of the Jews 
who formed the deputation that a short time before had waited on 
Jesus to ask his aid on behalf of the Roman centurion. It was quite 
natural that, when his "one only daughter" lay a-dying, he should 
apply on her account to Christ. But there may have been in his 
character and connections something of which we are ignorant, which 
made it undesirable that he should be forward in proclaiming what 
had happened in his house. 

It was a case of recovery from the dead, about which there might 
be some cavilling. The child could have been but a short time dead ; 
long enough, indeed, to establish the certainty of the event, yet not 
so long as to hinder any one from saying that it was literally and not 
figuratively true, " She is not dead, but sleepeth." In this respect 
we notice a difference, a progression in the three instances of raising 
from the dead recorded by the evangelists — that of Jairus' daughter, 
of the widow's son, and of Lazarus. It is not distinctly said to be so; 
but we presume that these were the only three cases in which the 
dead were restored to life by Christ. The one was soon after death, the 
other immediately before burial, and the third after the dead man had 
lain four days in the grave — the variety of the period after death at 
which the restoration was in each case effected not, perhaps, without 
a purpose. For these three great miracles stand, in one respect, at 
the head of all our Lord's works of wonder. They were the highest 
instances of the forth-putting of his divine almighty power. With 
respect to many of his other works, questions might be raised as to 



228 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

tLe nature or extent of the power required for their performance, but 
none as to these. Life in all its forms, from the highest to the low- 
est, is that mysterious thing which, when once destroyed, none but 
the Creator — the great Lifegiver — can restore. Were a dead man 
actually revivified before our eyes, we could not doubt that the power 
of the Omnipotent had gone forth to do it. In no case did Jesus 
Christ so conspicuously and undoubtedly show himself to be clothed 
with that power as when he raised the dead. The power, indeed, by 
which he wrought such miracles might not have been naturally his 
own. It might have been a delegated power given him for the time, 
not permanently belonging to him. He might have raised the dead 
as Elijah raised the son of the widow at Zarephath, as Elisha 
did the son of the Shunamite. Had it been so, we should have 
had some evidence thereof — some appeal on the part of the mere 
human agent to the great Being whose power was for the mo- 
ment lent and exercised. It was with trouble and with pain, after 
much and earnest prayer, that Elijah and Elisha, the only raisers of 
the dead in all the preceding ages, had succeeded. No one who saw 
or heard them could have imagined that they claimed any natural or 
inherent power of their own over the dead to call them back to life. 
They would themselves have counted it as the greatest insult to Jeho- 
vah to do so. How is it in this respect with Jesus Christ ? Stand 
beside him as he calls the dead to life. Look at the manner of his 
acting ; listen to the words that he employs. Is it as a servant, the 
delegate of another, that he speaks and acts ? Is it with any con- 
sciousness on his part, felt or exhibited, that he was rising above the 
level at which he ordinarily stood, that he was then doing something 
which he had been specially commissioned and supernaturally quali- 
fied to accomplish ? Surely there is nothing more remarkable about 
these raisings from the dead by Jesus Christ than the simple, easy, 
unostentatious way in which they were effected. " Young man, I say 
unto thee, Arise !" " Maid, arise !" " Lazarus, come forth !" He speaks 
thus to the dead, and they hear and live. It is in the style of Him 
who said, "Let there be light, and there was light." It is the Lord 
of the living and of the dead whose voice penetrates the unseen world, 
and summons the departed spirit to resume its mortal tenement. 

But if. as to the power he wields, Jesus never presents himself to 
our eye in a diviner, never does he show himself in a more human 
aspect than in these raisings from the dead. Can we overlook the 
fact that they were those of the only son of a widowed mother, the 
only daughter, if not the only child, of two fond parents, the only 
brother of two affectionate sisters — of those whose loss in ther 






^ 



THE EAISING OF THE RULER'S DAUGHTER. 229 

respective homesteads would be so deeply felt, of those whose resto 
ration quickened so acute a grief into such an ecstatic joy ? And in 
each case there was something quite singular in the tenderness of 
our Lord's conduct towards the mourners. He knew beforehand how 
speedily the anxiety that he witnessed would be relieved, all the sor- 
row chased away; but the "Weep not" to the mother before he 
touched the bier, the " Fear not, only believe," to the agitated father, 
the tears that fell before the grave of Lazarus, what a testimony do 
they bear to the exquisite susceptibility of the Saviour's spirit — to the 
quickness, the fulness, the liveliness of his sympathy with human grief. 
It is even then, when he is most divine, that he is most human — 
when he lifts himself the highest above our level that he links himself 
the closest to us as a true brother of our humanity. Such power to 
help, such readiness and capacity to sympathize meet but in one Being. 

Many passages of the New Testament might be quoted which 
assign it as one of the reasons of the incarnation that there might be 
such a Being, one compassed about with infirmities, one touched with 
a fellow-feeling with our infirmities, one tempted in all things like as 
we are, a merciful as well as a faithful, a compassionate as well as an 
all-powerful, all-prevalent High Priest over the house of God. The 
great Son of God, when he stooped to become a man, did not become 
thereby more mercifnl, more kind, more compassionate than he had 
been ; yet are we not waminted to believe that a human element was 
introduced and infused into them which otherwise the mercy, kind- 
ness, compassion would not have possessed? If the manhood was 
a gainer by bringing it into close, mysterious union with the Divinity, 
was there no gain to the Divinity by the incarnation ? — not, of course, 
a gain absolutely, not a gain as to any original, essential faculty or 
attribute of the Supreme, but a gain as to the bringing of the Divine 
Being into closer and more sympathetic fellowship with man ? We 
all know how difficult it is, whatever be the natural capacity and 
largeness of our pity, to sympathize fully and tenderly with a kind of 
trial we have never felt. Those who have never wept over any dead 
they loved, can they enter into the grief of the bereaved ? And how 
could we, but by the incarnation, have had one who could enter as 
Jesus can into all our sorrows ? 

Why was such a sympathy as his provided for us, but that as sin- 
ners as well as sufferers we might cast ourselves upon it for support ? 
J\su& is the great raiser of human souls as well as of human bodies. 
He quickeneth whom he will. The hour has come when all that are 
in the grave of sin, of spiritual death, may hear his voice. That 
voice is sounding all around us as in the ears of the dead. "Awake," 



230 THE LIFE 01' CHEIST. 

it says to each of us — "awake, thou that sleepest, arise from the 
dead, and Christ shall give thee life." Let us awake, and with life 
new-given turn to the Lifegiver; rejoicing to know that as tenderly 
as he handed her new-raised son to the widow of Nain, as tenderly 
as he ordered the food to be given to the little daughter of Jairus, so 
tenderly will he watch over the first stages of our spiritual being ; and 
that as fully as the griefs of widowed mother and weeping parents 
were shared in of old by Him in Galilee, so fully will he share in all 
the griefs of our earthly history, till he take us to the land where his 
own gracious hand shall wipe off the tears from every eye, and we 
shall no more need another to weep with us in our sorrows. 



VI. 

The Embassy of the Baptist — the Great Invitation.* 

Oue Lord's public ministry in Galilee began at the time that John 
had been cast into prison, and had now continued for more than half 
a year. There was much in this ministry which those disciples of 
the Baptist who kept aloof from Jesus could not comprehend. There 
was the entire absence of that ascetic rigor and stern denunciation of 
all iniquity, by which their master's character and teaching had been 
distinguished. There were no fastings, no prescribed repeated prayers ; 
there was the call of a publican to be an apostle, there was the eat- 
ing and drinking with publicans and sinners. All this appeared to 
them not only different from, but inconsistent with the idea of that 
kingdom of whose advent their master had announced himself as the 
herald. Some of them carried their doubts and difficulties to John 
himself in the prison. Hearing from them of the works of Christ, 
the Baptist sent two of their number to Jesus, and bade them put to 
him the question, " Art thou He that should come, or do we look for 
another?" As coming from John himself, and meant for his personal 
satisfaction, the question certainly would imply that some temporary 
misgiving had crept into the Baptist's mind. It is somewhat difficult 
to believe, after the revelations made to him, after what he had seen 
and heard at the baptism, after his own repeated public proclama- 
tions of it, that his faith in the Messiahship of Jesus had been sha- 
ken. His long and unexpected imprisonment, however, must have 
severely tried his faith. To such a man, from infancy a child of the 
desert, who had roamed with such free footstep through the wilder- 

* Matt. 11. 






THE EMBASSY OF THE BAPTIST. 231 

ness of Engedi, who, when the time came for his manifestation to 
Israel, had but exchanged the freedom of his mountain solitudes for 
those liberties of speech and action he took with his fellow-country- 
men, the months of his imprisonment must have moved slowly and 
drearily along, turning even his strength into weakness. The chilly 
damp of being hurried unexpectedly from Herod's presence and his 
former open, active life into the cheerless, idle solitude of the prison, 
fell all the chillier upon his heart on his coming to know that Jesus 
had been apprised of his imprisonment, and that yet no mesrage of 
sympathy had been sent, that no movement for his deliverance was 
made. His notions of the coming kingdom may not have been dif- 
ferent from those entertained at the time by the apostles and other 
followers of Christ. Perhaps he fancied that at the setting up oi this 
kingdom all injustice and oppression and spiritual wickedness in ligh 
places was to be done away, the axe to be laid at their root, the fan 
to be so used as thoroughly to purge the threshing-floor. Perhaps, 
in rebuking Herod as he did, he thought that it was but a first blow 
dealt at that which the mightier than he who was to come after him 
was wholly to destroy. And when, instead of his expectations being 
fulfilled, he was left unvisited, uncheered, unhelped ; and he heard of 
the course which Jesus was pursuing, gathering crowds indeed around 
him, but carefully abstaining from announcing himself as the Mes- 
siah, or doing any thing towards the erection of a new kingdom — in 
some season of disquietude and despondency, perplexed and a little 
impatient, sharing their feelings, and in the hope of at once relieving 
their doubts and removing his own misgivings, he sent two of his dis- 
ciples to put to him a question which might be the mean.j of drawing 
from Jesus a public declaration of his Messiahship, and of inducing 
him openly to inaugurate the new kingdom.* 

The messengers arrived and delivered their message at a very 
opportune conjuncture. " In the same hour he cured many of their 
infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits ; and unto many that were 
blind he gave sight." Luke 7 : 21. Jesus kept John's messengers for 
a season near him instead of answering them, going on with his heal- 
ing work. He then turned to them and said, " Go your way, and tell 

* Many think that it was for the sake of his disciples, anil for then- sakes alone, 
that the Baptist sent them on this errand, not that he had any doubts himself, 
but that he knew they had. It is altogether likely that he had some regard to 
4heir establishment in a true faith in Christ. The question, however, put into 
their lips comes too directly from himself, and the answer is directed too plainly 
and pointedly to him, to allow us to shut out the idea of personal relief and satis- 
fuction \ eing contemplated. 



232 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

John what things ye have seen and heard ; how that the blind see 
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are 
raised, to the poor the gospel is preached." It is not simply to the 
miracles as displays of superhuman power that Jesus appeals ; it is 
to their kind and character, as peculiarly and prophetically Messi- 
anic. Jesus had hitherto refrained from assuming the title of the 
Messiah, or announcing himself as such. John by his messengers 
urges him to do so. Christ contents himself with simply pointing to 
such works done by him as the Baptist could not fail to recognize as 
a fulfilment of those prophecies of Isaiah, in which the days and 
doings of the Messiah were described. Nor can we fail to notice 
that, side by side with the greatest of the miracles, reserved as the 
closing, crowning testimony to the Messiahship, is the fact that to the 
poor the gospel was preached; to the poor as well as to the rich, to no 
favored people, class, or section of mankind, to all in that universal 
character which all sustain as sinful, responsible, immortal. The 
words that Jesus added, "And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be 
offended in me," may have carried with them a special allusion to the 
Baptist, while proclaiming the blessedness of the man who was not 
offended at the patience and gentleness of Jesus, his readiness to 
wait and to suffer, to invite and encourage, rather than to denounce 
and to punish. 

Having given them what seemed a sufficient answer, Jesus sent 
John's messengers away. He had something more, however, to say 
to the people that was not for the Baptist's ear ; which must not be 
said till the messengers were gone. What they had just seen and 
heard was fitted to create an unfavorable impression, as if the faith, 
or fortitude, or patience of John had utterly given way. Eager to 
shield the character of his forerunner, Jesus turned to the multitude 
and said to them concerning John, "What went ye out into the wil- 
derness to see? A reed shaken by the wind?" a man bowing and 
bending as the reed does before every passing breeze, a man fickle of 
purpose, changeable in faith, believing at Bethabara, disbelieving now 
at Machaerus? Not such a man is John; rock-like, not reed-like — 
such as he was in the wilderness, such is he in Herod's prison, 
"What went ye out to see? A man clothed in soft raiment?" caring 
for the comforts and luxuries of life, or a man who, all negligent as he 
had been of these before, feels now the hair-cloth to be too hard a 
garment, and would fain exchange it for a softer one? Not such a 
man is John. The wearers and lovers of soft raiment you will find in 
palaces, not in prisons. John cares as little for such raiment now as 
when of his own free will he chose the hair-cloth as his garment 



THE EMBASSY OF THE BAPTIST 233 

'But what went ye out to see? A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, 
and more than a prophet." The only one among all the prophets 
whose course and office were themselves the subjects of prophecy; 
whose birth, like that of his great Master, an angel was commis- 
sioned to announce; his predecessors seeing but from afar across the 
breadth of intervening centuries, he, the friend of the bridegroom, 
standiug by the bridegroom's side, his office such towards Christ 
as to elevate him to a height above any ever reached before, yet 
this kind of greatness, one springing from position and office, as 
local, external, temporary, not once to be mentioned alongside of that 
other kind of greatness which is moral, spiritual, intrinsic, eternal. 
"For this is he of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger 
before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. Verily 
I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not 
risen a greater than John the Baptist : notwithstanding, he that is 
least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." 

More than one public testimony had been borne by John to 
Jesus. Jesus answers these by the witness he thus bears to John.. 
But as he thinks of himself in conjunction with the Baptist, the 
strange and inconsistent treatment that they respectively had met 
with from the men of that generation presents itself to his thoughts. 
Matt. 11:16-19. It is but seldom that any thing like criticism or 
complaint touching those around him comes from the lips of Jesus 
All the more interesting is the glance that he here casts, the judg- 
ment that he here pronounces, upon the men of his own age and 
nation. Addressed by two different voices, speaking in two different 
tones, they had turned a deaf ear to both. The rigor of the law came 
to them in the message of the Baptist ; they took offence at it. The 
gentleness and love of the gospel came to them in the message of 
Jesus ; they took equal offence at it ; justifying in either case their 
conduct by fixing on something in the character or life of each of 
the two messengers which they had turned into matter of complaint 
and accusation; guilty of great unfairness in doing so, exhibiting the 
grossest inconsistency, charging opposite excesses upon John and 
upon Jesus, saying of the one that he was too austere and ascetic, 
that he had a devil — raying of the other that he was too free and 
social, that he was a gluttonous man and a winebibber, the friend of 
publicans and sinners. Had it been any other two of Heaven's cho- 
sen messengers that they had to deal with, they might have had less 
difficulty in fixing on some irregularity or eccentricity of conduct out 
of which to fashion the shelter they sought to construct. But that 
even with them they tried this expedient, and imagined that they had 



234 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

succeeded, only shows to what lengths that principle or tendency of 
our nature will go which seeks to mix up the claims of religion with 
the character of its advocate. 

But now the Saviour's thoughts pass onward from the contempla- 
tion of that folly and inconsistency which a familiar similitude bor- 
rowed from the market-place may expose, to dwell more profoundly 
upon the conduct of those cities wherein most of his mighty works 
were done. In endeavoring to follow and fathom from this point 
onwards the train of our Lord's reflections, as recorded by the evan- 
gelist, we enter a region remote and very elevated. "Woe unto 
thee, Chorazin ! woe unto thee, Bethsaida ! for if the mighty works 
which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they 
would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes." "And thou, 
Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to 
hell; for if the mighty works which have been done in thee, had 
been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day." "Who 
is he who announces so confidently what certain communities would 
have done had they been placed in other circumstances than those in 
which they actually stood, and what altered outward destiny would 
have followed the different course pursued? " It shall be more toler- 
able for Tyre and Sidon and for the land of Sodom at the day of 
judgment than for you." Who is he who anticipates the verdicts of 
eternity, pronouncing so confidently upon the greater and the lesser 
guilt, fore-announcing the lighter and the heavier doom? 

But now, before the eye of the man Christ Jesus, there spreads 
out a section of the great mystery that hangs over this world's spirit- 
ual history. Here are men — these inhabitants of Chorazin, Beth- 
saida, and Capernaum — involved in all the greater guilt, incurring all 
the heavier doom, in consequence of the presence of Jesus in the 
midst of them. There were men — those inhabitants of Sodom, and 
Tyre, and Sidon, who, had they lived in an after-age and enjoyed the 
privileges bestowed upon the others, would have repented and shared 
in all the blessings of the heavenly kingdom. How many questions,, 
as we stand in front of facts like these, press upon our thoughts and 
rise to our trembling lips — questions touching the principles and pro- 
cedure of the divine government as affecting the future and eternal 
destinies of our race — questions we cannot answer, that it pains and 
perplexes us to the uttermost even to entertain! It is in this very 
region that there comes one of the greatest trials of our faith. Was 
there no trial of the like kind for the man Christ Jesus, as he, too, 
stood gazing down into these depths? In what way or to what 
extent the human spirit of our Lord lay open to that burden and 



THE EMBASSY OF THE BAPTIST. 235 

pressure which a contemplation of the sins and sufferings here and 
hereafter of so many of our fellow-creatures brings down upon every 
thoughtful spirit that has any of the tenderness of humanity in it, it 
is not for us to determine. But that he who was tempted in all 
things like as we are did at this time feel something of this burden 
and pressure, seems clear from the attitude into which he immediately 
throws himself. "At that time" — when thought was hovering over 
this dark and awful region — Jesus lifted up his eyes to heaven. Some 
light has broken in upon that darkness from above, drawing his eyes 
upwards to its source. Some voice from above has spoken, that 
comes, as his own came upon the troubled waters of the lake, to still 
the inward agitation of his thoughts. "Jesus answered and said, O 
Father, Lord of heaven and earth !" Infinitely wise, infinitely mer- 
ciful, infinitely loving Father, thou art Lord of heaven and earth. 
The past has all been ordered — the future will be all arranged, by 
thee, and in thy character and purposes and providence over all as at 
once the Father and the Judge, the solution lies of all that to created 

eyes may seem obscure. "I thank thee that thou hast hid 

these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto 
babes." Why are the things that belong to their eternal peace hid- 
den from some and revealed to others, hidden from so many, revealed 
to comparatively so few? One beam of light falls upon the darkness 
here, and for it the thanks are given. 

It is not an arbitrary distinction, drawn by a capricious hand that 
loves to show its power. The fate of Sodom, Tyre, and Sidon was 
not one that it was impossible for them to have evaded, that nothing 
could have turned aside. They might have repented, and had they 
repented, the ruin had not come. A thick cloud, charged with bolts 
of vengeance, hung over Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, 
because of their unbelief. All over the land it was but one of a fam • 
ily, or two of a city, who had welcomed the Saviour and his message. 
The right interpretation of all this was not given by saying that it 
was by a divine decree that had no regard to the character and con- 
duct of oaoh, that the eyes of some were blinded and the eyes of 
others opened to the heavenly light. It was from the wise and pru- 
dent, who thought themselves so much wiser or better than others, 
whose pride it was that blinded them, that the gospel was hidden. 
ft was to the babes, to the humble, the meek, the teachable, that it 
had been revealed. And it is not so much for the hiding it from the 
one as for the revealing it to the other that Jesus here gave thanks. 
On two after-occasions of his life he had each of the two alterna- 
tives — the hiding and the revealing, separately and exclusively before 



2^6 THE LIFE OF CHK1ST. 

him, and the difference of the emotions felt and expressed by him 
marked the difference of their effects upon his mind and heart. 
Would we know what impression the revealing made, let us plant 
ourselves by his side as the Seventy return from their brief but suc- 
cessful mission, and tell him of the results ; when, without a shadow 
on his joy, he rejoices in spirit, and repeats in words the very thanks- 
giving that he now offered. Would we know what impression the 
hiding made, let us plant ourselves beside him as he beheld the city 
and wept over it, exclaiming, " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem ! if thou hadst 
known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong 
unto thy peace ! but now they are hid from thine eyes." 

But is it a full solution of the mystery that those left in darkness 
have themselves, by their wilfulness and pride and carnality, created 
a medium through which the heavenly light cannot pass ? Why is it, 
if the spirits of all men are equally and absolutely beneath the con- 
trol of the Creator, that any are suffered to remain in such condition ? 
There is no answer to such a question; for, take up the great enigma 
of the doings of God and the destinies of men at what end you may, 
approach it from what quarter you please, adopt whatever method of 
solution you may prefer, make your way through the difficulties that 
beset you as far as you can, sooner or later you reach the point where 
explanation fails, and where there is nothing left for us but to join 
with him who said, " Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy 
sight." 

The occasion now before us may have been the first in which 
Jesus was seen and heard in the act of prayer. The stopping of the 
current of his address to them by the offering up of a short and sol- 
emn thanksgiving to his Father in heaven must have made a deep 
impression on the multitude. It was singularly fitted to excite won- 
der and awe, and to lead them to inquire what the peculiar relation- 
ship was in which Jesus stood to the great Being whom he so ad- 
dressed. Was it not as one reading their thoughts, and graciously 
condescending to unfold so much of the mystery of his Sonship to the 
Father, that Jesus went on to say, " All things are delivered unto me 
of my Father : and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father, .... and 
he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him." The Baptist, in his closing 
testimony to Jesus, had declared, " The Father loveth the Son, and 
hath given all things into his hand." Jesus now takes up and appro- 
priates this testimony. With special reference, we may believe, to 
the things hidden and revealed of which he had been speaking, he 
says : * All things — all those things concerning man's relationship to 
God, and his condition here and hereafter, have not simply been 



THE GREAT INVITATION. 237 

revealed, but been delivered to me — handed over for adjustment, for 
discovery to and bestowal upon men ; and chiefly that of the true 
knowledge of God.' Intimate and complete is the mutual knowledge 
which the Father and the Son have of one another, a knowledge in 
kind and in degree incommunicable. It is the Father alone who 
knoweth who the Son is ; the Son alone who knoweth who the Father 
is. " As the Father knoweth me," said Jesus, " even so know I the 
Father." John 10 :15. Finite may measure finite, like comprehend 
its like, man know what is in man, but here it is Infinite embracing 
Infinite, the divine Son and the divine Father compassing and fath- 
oming the divine nature, and the divine attributes belonging equally 
to both. 

And yet there is a knowledge of the Father to which man may 
reach, yet reach only by receiving it through the Son. Had we been 
told simply that no man knoweth the Father but the Son, nor the 
Son but the Father, we should not have known to which of the two 
we were to look for any such acquaintance with either or both as our 
finite minds are capable of attaining; but when Jesus says "no man 
knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will 
reveal him," he announces himself to us as the sole revealer of the 
Father ; this is no small or secondary part of his gracious office, to 
make God clearly known to us as our Father which is in heaven. 
To some obscure and partial knowledge of the Supreme Being as 
Creator, Upholder, Sovereign, Governor, we may attain without help 
of this revelation of him by Christ ; but if we would know him in his 
living personality, know him as a God not afar off, but near at hand, 
know him in all the richness and fulness of his mercy and love, know 
him as a pitying, forgiving, protecting, providing, comforting, recon- 
ciled Father, we must get at that knowledge through Christ ; we must 
see him as the Son reveals him. No man knoweth thus the Father, 
but he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. 

But who is he to whom this revelation of the Father is offered ? 
Let the broad unrestricted invitation with which the statement of the 
Saviour is immediately succeeded supply the answer: "Come unto 
me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 
This invitation loses half its meaning, taken out of the connection in 
which it was spoken. "We understand and appreciate the fulness and 
richness of its significance only by looking upon it as grounded on 
and flowing out of what Christ had the moment before been saying 
At first sight it might seem as if there was something like confine- 
ment and contraction in the preceding utterances of Jesus. He claims 
all things as committed to him. Otherwise than through him nothing 



2oS THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

can come to us. He tells us that for all true knowledge of the Fathei 
we must be indebted exclusively to him. As to our knowing and 
receiving, does this not seem to narrow the channel of their convey- 
ance? Yes, as this channel lies outside our earth, spanning the mys- 
terious distance between it and heaven; but watch as this channel 
touches the earth and spreads out its waters on every side, then see 
how all narrowness and contraction disappear. "All things are 
delivered unto me of my Father." Bat why so delivered, why put 
so exclusively into his hand ? Simply and solely that they might so 
easily, so freely, so fully come unto ours. For us to go elsewhere 
than to him, to expect that otherwise than through him we are to 
receive any thing, is to resist and repudiate this ordinance of the 
Father. But he has all, he holds all as the Treasurer of the king- 
dom, the Steward of the divine mercies, the sinner's divinely consti- 
tuted Trustee, and he has all and holds all under the condition that 
there shall be the freest, most unrestricted, most gracious dispensing 
of all the treasures committed to his custody, that whoever asks shall 
get, that no needy one shall ever come to him and be sent unrelieved 
away. "No man knoweth the Father but he to whomsoever the Son 
will reveal him." But does he niggardly withhold that revelation, or 
restrict it to a few? No; wide as the world is, of all who seek to 
know the Father that knowing him they may have peace, so wide is 
the unlimited invitation spread. In many a sublime attractive posi- 
tion do we see Jesus standing while executing his gracious office here 
on earth — in none loftier or more divine than when placing himself 
in the centre of the wide circle of humanity, and, looking round upon 
the burdened millions of our race with the full consciousness of 
one who has the power to relieve all who come, he says: "Come 
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
rest." Best — this is what our inward nature most deeply needs; for 
everywhere, in every region of it — in our intellect, our conscience, 
our affection*, our will — the spirit of unrest, like a possessing demon, 
haunts us with its disturbing presence. Then let us see how Christ 
would have us bring these vexed souls of ours to him, that from every 
such haunted region of it he may cast the vexing demon out. 

Our intellect, in its search after God, is in unrest, reechoing the 
ancient plaint, "Oh that I knew where I might find him! . . . Behold, 
I go forward, but he is not there ; and backward, but I cannot per- 
ceive him : on the left hand where he doth work, but I cannot behold 
him: he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him." 
There dawns upon us the sublime idea of a Being infinitely wise and just 
and good, author of all, and ordered of all but through the clouds and 



THE GKEAT INVITATION. 239 

darkness with which his guidance and government of this woild are so 
densely swathed we begin to lose sight of him. Looking at him as re- 
vealed alone in the ways of his providence, we get perplexed as we look 
around upon a world in which such oppressions, wrongs, injustices 
are done, where might so often triumphs over right, where sin and 
misery so fearfully abound, where death comes in to close the short- 
lived, chequered scene of every earthly life. Faith begins to lose its 
footing ; now believing and now doubting, now all things clear, now 
all things clouded, restlessly we are tossed as on a troubled sea. 
What we want is some firm ground for our faith in God to rest on. 
Jesus Christ supplies that ground in revealing this God to us as our 
Father, in telling us that such as he himself was, in love and pity 
and care and help to all around him, such is the God and Father of 
us all to the whole human family. In our anxiety to get one true 
clear sight of that great Being whose doings we contemplate with 
such a mixture of awe and of uncertainty, we are ready with Philip 
to say: "Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us." The answer 
comes from the lips of Jesus, "Have I been so long time with you, 
and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath 
seen the Father." It is a Father of whose love we have the earthly 
image in the love of Christ, who rules the world we live in. Can we 
doubt any longer that wisdom, mercy, justice, and love shall direct 
the whole train of the administration of human affairs, the whole 
treatment of each individual of our race ? 

There is unrest in the conscience. A wounded conscience who 
can bear? The sense of guilt as it rises within the breast who can 
quench? The dark forebodings that it generates who can clear away? 
Men tell us our fears are idle ; we try to believe them, and put our 
foot upon those fears to tread them down, but they spring up afresh 
beneath our tread. They tell us that God is too merciful — too kind 
to punish. We try to believe them, knowing that God is a thousand- 
fold milder, more merciful than thought of ours can conceive; but we 
have only to look within and around us upon the sufferings that sin 
inflicts, and the vision of a Divinity that does not, will not punish, 
vanishes like a dream of the night. Where then can our conscience- 
troubled spirits find repose, where but in Him who hath taken our sin 
upon him, in whom there is redemption for us through his blood, 
even the forgiveness of all our sins? If we may go to Cluist for any 
thing, it is for this forgiveness. If among the things that have been 
delivered unto him of the Father, there be one that more clearly and 
conspicuously than another is held out to be taken at once from his 
most gracious hand, it is the pardon, the peace, the reconciliation 



240 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

with God, offered to us in him. If we put these aside, or will not 
take them as the fruits of our Lord's passion, death, and righteous- 
ness, purchased for us at that great cost to him, gratuitously bestow 
ed on us, then if the higher instincts of our moral and spiritual nature 
become in any degree quickened, what a weary, toilsome, fruitless 
task do they set us to execute. These instincts tell us that we are 
the creatures of another's hand, the dependants on another's bounty, 
the subjects of another's rule, that to him our first duties are owing, 
that against him our greatest offences have been committed, that to 
stard well with him is the first necessity of our being. How then 
shall we remedy the evil of our past ingratitude and disobedience, 
how shall we bring things right and keep things right between us and 
Go 1 ? Oh ! if all the anxious thought, and weary labors, the pray- 
ers, the pains, the self-restraints, the self-mortifications, the offerings 
at all the altars, the giving to all the priests, the sacrifices — personal, 
domestic, social, of affections, of property, of life — that have been 
made by mankind to turn away the apprehended wrath of heaven, 
and to work themselves into something like favor with the powers of 
the invisible world ; if they could be all brought together and heaped 
up in one great mass before us, what a mountain-pile of toil and suf- 
fering would they exhibit, what a gigantic monument to the sense of 
sin, the power of conscience in the human heart. With a most mourn- 
ful eye we look upon that pile as we remember that it has been 
heaped up needlessly and in vain, that all that was wanted was the 
ceasing on the part of those engaged in it from the effort to establish 
a righteousness of their own before God, the ceasing to revert to any 
such methods to ward off the displeasure or to win the favor of the 
Most High, the ceasing to repair to such harbors of refuge as churches, 
altars and priests : and the opening simply of the ear to the words of 
Jesus, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I 
will give you rest." 

There is unrest in our affections. Here they foolishly wander, 
and there they are bitterly checked ; ever seeking, never finding 
full, allowed, complacent rest. And why? Because nowhere here 
on earth can a being or object be found on which we can safely, 
innocently, abidingly lavish the whole wealth of that affection which 
the heart contains. For the right -placing, the full outdrawing, 
the perfect and the permanent repose of the heart, we want one to 
love — above us, so that reverence may mingle with esteem ; like us 
ao that closely and familiarly we may embrace — one in whom all cor. 
ceivable excellences meet and centre, all that the eye covets to admire , 
that the heart asks to love. We seek for such a one in vain till Wf 






THE GREAT INVITATION. 241 

hear Jesus saying, " Come unto me, and / will give you rest." We 
go, and all, and more than all we asked for or could think of, we find in 
him. Grace and truth blended in perfect harmony, a beauty undim- 
med by a single blemish, a sympathy constant and entire, a love eter- 
oal, unchangeable, which nothing can quench, from which nothing 
can separate us. Here at last, and here only, do we find one wishing to 
be loved and worthy to be loved with the full devotion of the heart. 
Restless till it lights on him, with what a warm embrace, when it 
finds him, does the heart of faith ciasp Jesus to its bosom! "What 
is thy beloved more than another beloved?" may the watchman of 
the city say. The answer is at hand : ' My beloved is the chief among 
ten thousand ; he is altogether lovely. I am my beloved's, and my 
beloved is mine — my Lord, my God, my Shepherd, Saviour, Kins- 
man, Brother, Friend.' 

There is unrest in the will. It is not subject to the law of God, 
neither indeed can be. It aims at, it attempts independence. We 
would be our own masters ; we will not have another to reign over us ; 
and so, instead of the quiet of a settled order, there is confusion and 
anarchy within. All, indeed, is not left absolutely loose, unreined, 
unregulated. A yoke of some kind we all are born under or willingly 
take on. Some assume the yoke of a single passion of their nature, 
and if that passion be a strong one, such as covetousness, it is not 
long ere it turns the man into a slave, making him a mere beast of 
burden — time for nothing, care for nothing, taste for nothing, joy in 
nothing but in working for it and under it. And the more work is 
done for it, the more does it impose, Nor does it mend the mat- 
ter much if, instead of one there be many such yokes about the neck, 
jostling one another, fretting and galling the wearer by the force and 
variety of the impulses that drive him in this direction and in that. 
It is to all mankind as bearers of the one yoke or the many that 
Jesus says, ' Take up my yoke, throw off these others, the yoke of 
pride, of covetousness, of sensuality, of worldliness, of ambition, of 
self-indulgence — take on that yoke which consists in devotedness to 
me and to duty, in a life of self-restraint, in a struggle with all that is 
evil, a cultivation of all that is beautiful and good and holy. A hard 
yoke you may think this to be, but believe me, my yoke is easy, my bur- 
den is light, easier and lighter far than those you are groaning under. 

One great reason why we are unconscious of the comparative 
lightness and easiness of this yoke of the Christian discipleship is, 
that we take it on in the spirit of fear, and of a selfish, mercenary 
hope, rather than with that trust and love and gratitude which are 
the soft wrappings which, laid beneath it, make it so easy to be borne. 

Mfe of Christ. 16 



242 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

It is as those who have been redeemed to God by Christ's most pre- 
cious blood, whose sins have been all forgiven them for Jesus' sake, 
whose peace has been made with God through him ; it is in the spirit 
of child-like confidence, looking up to God as our Father in heaven, 
and to himself as having ready in his hand for us the grace and 
strength we need, that Jesus would have us meet e very duty, facs 
every temptation, endure every trial of the Christian life. But if 
instead of this it be with a doubtful mind and a divided heart that 
we put forth the hand to take on the yoke — if we do this, not so much 
to render a return for a great benefit already received as to add to 
our chance of receiving that benefit hereafter — if it be for peace and 
not from peace, for life and uot from life that we are working — what 
is this but trying without throwing it off to shift the old yoke of self 
a little, to loosen some of its fastenings, and by their help try to 
attach to us the new yoke of Christ? Is it wonderful that, encum- 
bered thus, there should be little freedom of motion, little capacity 
for and little enjoyment of the work of faith and labor of love ? If 
we desire to know how truly easy the yoke of Jesus is, let us first 
enter into the rest that at once and in full measure he gives to all 
who come to him — the rest of forgiveness, peace, acceptance with 
God. And then, animated and strengthened by the possession and 
enjoyment of this rest, let us assume the yoke, that in the bearing of 
it we may enter into the further rest that there is for us in him— the 
rest of a meek and lowly heart, gentle, resigned, contented, patient 
of wrong, submissive under suffering, a rest not given at once or in 
full measure to any ; to possess which we must be ready to er ter into 
the spirit of the following verses : 

"Fain would I my Lord pursue, 

Be all my Saviour taught ; 
Do as esus bade me do, 

And think as Jesus thought. 
But 't is Thou must change my heart ; 

The perfect gift must come from Thee. 
Meek Redeemer, now impart 

Thine own humility. 

"Lord, I cannot, must not rest 

Till I thy mind obtain ; 
Chase presumption from my breast, 

And all thy mildness gain. 
Give me, Lord, thy gentle heart ; 

Thy lowly mind my portion be \ 
Meek Redeemer, now impart 

Thine own humility." 



THE WOMAN WHO WAS A SiNHJSB. "43 

VII. 

The Woman who was a 5inner.» 

Coming, as it does in the narrative of St. Luke, (the oni} evange- 
list who records it,) immediately after that discourse which closed 
with the invitation, " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest," how natural the thought that here, 
in what is told us about the woman who was a sinner, we have one 
instance — perhaps the first that followed its delivery — of that invita- 
tion being accepted — of one wearied and heavy laden coming to 
Jesus, and entering into the promised rest. Multitudes had already 
come to him to get their bodily ailments cured : she may have been 
the first who came under the pressure of a purely spiritual impulse — 
grieving, desiring, hoping, loving, to get all and more than all she 
sought. 

Jesus has accepted the invitation of a Pharisee, and reclines 
leaning upon his left arm, his head toward the table, his unsandalled 
feet stretched outwards. Through the crowd of guests and servants 
and spectators, a woman well known in the city for the profligate life 
she had been leading, glides nearer and nearer, till she stands behind 
him. As she stands she weeps. The tears fall thickly upon his feet. 
She has nothing else with which to do it, so she stoops and wipes the 
tears away with her loose dishevelled hair. She gently grasps the 
feet of Jesus to kiss them, and now she remembers the box she had 
brought, in hope, perhaps, to find some fitting opportunity of pouring 
its contents upon his head ; but she can make no nearer approach, 
and so she sheds the precious perfumed ointment on those feet which 
she had washed with her tears, wiped with the hairs of her head, and 
covered with the kisses of her lips. 

What has brought this woman here ? what moves her to act in 
this way to Jesus. Somewhere, somehow Jesus had recently crossed 
her path. She had heard his calls to repentance, his offers of forgive- 
ness, his promises of peace and rest. The arrow had entered into 
her soul. She stood ashamed and confounded. Her iniquities took 
hold of her so that she was not able to look up, yet deep within hei 
heart new hopes were rising, dimly before her eye new prospects 
dawned. All the penitence she experienced, all the new desires, 
expectations, resolutions, that were filling her breast she owed to hini 
— to the gentle and loving, yet resolute and truthful spirit in which 

* Luke 7: 36-50. 



244 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Jesus had spoken. She had looked at him, had listened to him, had 
followed him as he opened those arms of his mercy so widely, and 
invited all to come to him. And what he so fully offered — the peace 
of forgiveness, the blessedness of meekness and lowliness, of poverty 
of spirit, purity of heart — these are what, she now, above all things,, 
desired to have. Believing that she can get them alone from him, 
an irresistible attraction, draws her to him. Jewish women were 
wont to honor, by one or other mark of favor shown, the Rabbi or 
teacher to whom they felt most attached or indebted. But what 
shall she render unto One who has already quickened her to a new 
life of hope and love? She hears of his going to dine with the 
Pharisee. Too well she knows how this man and his guests will look 
upon her, what an act of effrontery on her part it will appear that 
she should obtrude her presence into such a dwelling at such a time, 
But faith makes her bold, love triumphs over fear. She presses in 
and on, till at last she finds herself bending over the feet of Jesus, 
with the costliest thing she has, the alabaster box of ointment, in her 
hand. As she stands behind that form, as she stoops to embrace 
those feet, all the thoughtlessness, the recklessness, the unrestrained 
self-indulgence of past years, the ties she had broken, the injuries 
she had done, the reproaches she had incurred, the sins that she had 
committed, flash upon her memory. Who is she, that she should 
come so near and touch so familiarly the pure and holy Jesus? She 
cannot meet his eye, she does not press herself upon his notice. But 
is he not the meek and compassionate, as well as the pure and the 
holy One? While others had frowned upon her, avoided her, dis- 
carded her, treated her as an outcast, had he not shown a deep and 
tender interest in her, a yearning over her to take her in his hand 
and lead her back to the paths of purity and peace ? It was this 
kindly treatment that had broken down all power to resist upon her 
part, winch had given him such a hold upon her, which had brought 
her to the house of the Pharisee to see him, which had drawn her so 
close to him. But the very thought of all the love and pity that he 
had shown to her and to all sinners opens afresh the fountains of 
shame and self-reproach, and the tears of a true and deep repentance 
flow forth ; not the tears of bare self-condemnation — a stinging re- 
morse goading the spirit to despair. Along with a true sense of her 
sin there is an apprehension of the Divine mercy — that mercy re- 
vealed to her in Jesus. She sorrows not over her sins as one who 
has no hope : a trust in Christ's readiness and power to pardon and 
to save her has already entered into her heart. The very sense, 
however, of his exceeding graciousness quickens the sense of her ex- 



THE WOMAN WHO WAS A SINNER. 245 

ceeding sinfulness. The faith and hope to which she has been 
begotten intensify her penitence, and that penitence intensifies her 
love ; so that as we look upon her — first standing silently weeping, 
then bending down and bathing those feet with her tears, then clasp- 
ing and kissing them and pouring the rich ointment over them — she 
presents herself to our eye as the most striking picture of a loving 
humble penitent at the feet of Jesus which the gospels present. 

It was with a very different sentiment from that with which we 
are disposed to look at her that she was looked at by the Pharisee 
who presided at the feast. He had noticed her entrance, watched 
her movements, seen that, though not turning round to speak to her, 
Jesus was not unconscious of her presence, was permitting her to 
wash and wipe and anoint his feet. For the woman he has nothing 
but indignation and contempt. He thinks only of what she had 
been, not of what she is ; and his only wonder as to her is, how she 
could have presumed to enter here and act as she has been doing. 
But he wonders also at Jesus. He cannot be the prophet that so 
many take him to be, or he would have known what kind of woman 
this was ; for he could not have known that and yet allowed himself 
to be defiled with her touch. Whatever respect he had been pre- 
pared to show to Jesus begins to suffer loss, as he sees him allowing 
such familiarities to be practised by such hands. Not that this 
respect had ever been very spiritual or very profound. The omis- 
sions that our Lord notices — notices not so much in the way of com- 
plaint *« for the purpose of bringing out the contrast between the 
treatment given by the two — Simon and the woman — would seem 
rather to imply that he had not been careful to show any particular 
regard to his guest. Perhaps he thought that he was paying such a 
compliment to Jesus in inviting him to his house that he need be the 
less attentive to the courtesies of his reception. It was a rare thing 
for a man like him — a Pharisee — to do such a thing. Simon, how- 
ever, was not one of the strict and rigid, the religious devotees of his 
order; he was more a moralist than a pietist; and seeing much in 
Jesus to approve, and even admire, he was quite ready to ask him 
to his house, in the hope, perhaps, that in the easy freedom of social 
intercourse he might test the pretensions of this new teacher and see 
farther than others into his true character and claims. One mark or 
token of his order is deeply stamped upon this Simon — pride — a 
pride, it may have been, a little different from that of the Pharisee 
whom Jesus represents in the parable as praising himself before God 
for his fasting twice in the week and giving tithes of all that he pos- 
sessed, yet quite akin to his in comparing himself with and despising 



246 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

others. He too might have stood and prayed thus with himself 
" God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, 
unjust, adulterers, or as this woman here." Any thing like contact, 
concert, familiar intercourse with such a low, abandoned woman, no 
man who had any proper self-respect, he thinks, could practise or 
endure. And now that he sees Jesus consenting to be touched and 
handled by her, his only explanation of it is that he cannot know 
what kind of woman she is. " Now when the Pharisee which had 
bidden him saw it, he spake within himself, saying, This man, if he 
were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman 
this is that toucheth him." Luke 7 : 39. 

In thinking and feeling so, he entirely overlooks the change that 
had taken place — the evidence of which appeared in the very man- 
ner of the woman's present conduct, and above all the nature and 
strength of the tie which that change created between her and Jesus. 
It was to lift him out of this deep abyss of pride, and if possible to 
show him how much closer, deeper, tenderer a relationship it was in 
which this penitent stood to him, than that in which he, Simon, stood, 
that Jesus stated the case of the two debtors : " And Jesus answer- 
ing said unto him, Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee. And 
he saith, Master, say on. There was a certain creditor which had 
two debtors : the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty 
And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both 
Tell me, therefore, which of them will love him most. Simon an- 
swered and said, I suppose that he to whom he forgave most. And 
he said unto him, Thou has rightly judged." 

As little as David saw the drift of Nathan's parable of the little 
ewe lamb, so little did Simon at first perceive the drift of the one now 
addressed to himself, and so he promptly answers, " I suppose that it 
would be he to whom he forgave most." Out of his own mouth he 
stands convicted. It would be straining the short parable in this 
instance spoken by our Lord if we took it as strictly and literally 
representing the relative positions before God in which Simon and 
the woman stood, or as intimating that both had been actually for- 
given, the one as much more than the other as five hundred exceeds 
fifty pence. It is not so much the amount actually owed as that 
known and felt by the debtors to be owing, and their conscious ina- 
bility to meet in any way the payment, that supplies the groundwork 
of our Lord's application of the supposititious case. "And he turned 
to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman ? I en- 
tered into thy house, thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she 
hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of 



THE WOMAN WHO WAS A SINNER. 247 

her head. Thou gavest me no kiss : but this woman since the time I 
came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou 
didst not anoint : but this woman hath anointed my feet with oint- 
ment. Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are 
forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the 
same loveth little." * Thou hast been watching, Simon, all that thia 
woman has been doing, but what is the true explanation of her con- 
duct, the explanation that vindicates at once her conduct to me and 
my conduct to her ? Why is it that she has been showing me marks 
of respect and strong personal attachment, contrasting so with those 
that you have shown, or rather have omitted to show ? She has done 
so because she loves so much ; and she loves so much, because she 
has had so much forgiven. It is but little compared with her that 
you feel you owe, but little that you can be forgiven ; but little, there- 
fore, that you love.' In speaking to him thus, how forbearingly, how 
leniently did the Lord deal with Simon; how much more leniently 
and forbearingly we may be apt to think than he deserved, or than 
his case warranted. But it was so in every case with our divine 
Master, ever seeking the good of those he dealt with — striving by the 
gentle insinuations of his grace to win his way into their consciences 
and hearts, rather than by a full display of all their guilt or stern 
denunciation of it. If in this instance he was successful, if Simon's 
eyes were opened to discern in the two debtors himself and the wom- 
an, and in the creditor to whom all their debts were due none other 
than He who was sitting at his table, what a wonderful revolution in 
his estimate of Jesus must have taken place; for nothing in this 
whole narrative strikes so much as the simple, natural, easy, unosten- 
tatious manner in which Jesus assumes to himself the position of 
that Being to whom all spiritual debts are owing, and by whom they 
are forgiven. 

" Her sins," said Jesus of the woman to Simon, " which are many, 
are forgiven, for she loved much." So to interpret this saying of the 
Saviour as to make the loving the ground of the forgiveness would be 
to contradict both the letter and spirit of the preceding parable, in 
which the love is represented as flowing out of the forgiveness, and 
not the forgiveness as flowing out of the love — Jesus points to the 
love not as the spring but as the evidence of the forgiveness — to the 
strength of the one as indicating the extent of the other. 

When Christ said so emphatically to the Pharisee, " Simon, I have 
somewhat to say to thee," the attention of the woman must hare 
been for the moment diverted from her own case and directed to the 
colloquy that followed, the more so as it seemed at first to have no 



248 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

reference to her. But when he turned, and looking on her for the 
first time, said, " Seest thou this woman?" into what a strange tumult 
of emotion must she have been thrown, all eyes on her — the contrast 
between her attentions and love to Jesus and those of Simon drawD 
out in particular after particular by our Lord himself, all closed by 
her hearing him declare, " Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which 
are many, are forgiven." The desire, the hope of pardon, had already 
dawned upon her heart. She had trusted in the divine mercy as 
revealed to her in Jesus, and already experienced the relief and com- 
fort this trust was fitted to impart. Her faith, however, was yet im- 
perfect ; her sense, her assurance of forgiveness not relieved from 
uncertainty and doubt ; but now from the lips of the Lord himself 
she hears the fact announced that her sins had been forgiven ; and, 
as if that were not enough — as if he would do every thing that word 
of his could do to seal the assurance on her heart— Jesus turns to 
her and says, " Thy sins are forgiven." Fear takes wings and flies 
away ; doubt can find no more room within ; the sins without num- 
ber of all her bygone life rush out of sight into the depths of that sea 
into which Jesus casts them. Not ceasing to be penitent, more pen- 
itent than ever, the bowed-down spirit is lifted up as the full blessed- 
ness enters and possesses it of one whose trangression is forgiven, 
whose sin is covered. 

" Thy sins are forgiven thee." Was it in wonder and with an awe 
like that of men who feel themselves in the presence of One in whom 
the most peculiar prerogative of the Divinity resides, or was it in 
hatred and with contempt of him as an arrogant, presumptuous blas- 
phemer, that those around the table began to say to themselves, 
"Who is this that forgiveth sins also?" Whatever their state of 
mind was as to himself, Jesus does not lay it bare, nor stop to expose 
or correct it. But there was one mistake that they might make as to 
the forgiveness he had pronounced. They might imagine it to have 
been capriciously or arbitrarily dispensed ; they might fail to trace 
its connection with the spiritual condition of her upon whom it was 
bestowed ; if not dissevering it from its source in him, they might 
dissociate it from its channel, the faith in him which she had cher- 
ished. Even she herself, after what had been said, might be disposed 
to attach the forgiveness to the love, rather than the love to the for- 
giveness, overlooking the common root of both in that faith which 
brought her to Jesus, and taught her to cast her confidence alone 
and undividedly on him. Therefore his last word, as he dismisses 
her, is, " Thy faith hath .saved thee ; go in peace." In peace she 
goes, silently as she had entered; not a single word throughou; 



THE WOMAN WHO WAS A SINNER. 249 

escaping from her lips, her heart at first too full of humiliation, grief, 
and shame, now too full of joy and gratitude. In peace she goes, 
light for ever after on her heart the reproach that man might cast 
upon her — the Christ-given peace the keeper of her mind and heart 
She goes to hide herself froni our view, her name and all her after- 
history unknown. The faith and traditions of western Christendom 
have indeed identified her with Mary of Mag dala, and assigned to her 
a place among those women who ministered to the Lord of their sub- 
stance, who were admitted to close and familiar intercourse with him 
in Galilee, and who were privileged to be the last attendants on the 
cross and first visitors of the sepulchre. We will not presume to say 
how far the former life of the penitent woman would have interfered 
with her occupying such a position ; we will not allude to the diffi- 
culty that will occur as you try to imagine what substance she could 
have had, or whence derived, out of which she could minister to 
Jesus. Neither shall we dwell upon the fact that out of Mary of 
Magdala seven devils had been cast, a possession not necessarily 
implying any former criminality of life, yet apparently quite incon- 
sistent wdth the kind of life that this woman had been leading. 
Enough, that when Mary, called Magdalene, is first mentioned, as 
she is in the opening verses of the next chapter in St. Luke's gospel, 
she is introduced as a new person, not amid scenes then, nor at any 
time thereafter, that in any way connect her with the woman that 
had been a sinner. It is true that, while there is the absence of all 
evidence in favor of their identification, there is the absence also of 
evidence sufficient positively to disprove it. In these circumstances 
it may be grateful to many to trace in the narrative now before us 
the earlier history of one so loved, and honored afterwards by Jesus, 
as was Mary of Magdala. Much more grateful we own to us is the 
belief that this penitent, whose broken heart was so tenderly up- 
bound — having got the healing from his gentle, loving hands — from 
that notoriety into which her sin had raised her, retired voluntarily 
into an obscurity so deep that her name and her dwelling-place, and 
all her after-story, lie hidden from our sight. 

The forgiveness so graciously conveyed to this nameless penitent 
is equally needed by all of us, is offered to us all — Christ is as willing 
to bestow it upon each of us as ever he was to bestow it upon her. 
The manner of our possession and enjoyment of this gift depends 
apon the manner in which we deal with the tender of it made to us 
by him. We may keep it for ever hanging at a distance out before 
us, a thing desired or hoped for, now with more and now with less 
eagerness and expectancy, according to the changing temper of oiir 



250 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

mind and heart. But we might have, we ought to have, this blessing 
now in' hand as our present, full, secure, peace-giving possession. 
And not till it thus be ours, not till the hand of faith shall grasp and 
hold it as ours in Christ, ours through our oneness with him in whom 
we have redemption through his blood, even this very forgiveness of 
our sins ; not till we exchange the vague and general and vacillating 
hope for the firm yet humble trust which appropriates at once in its 
full measure this rich benefit of our Lord's life and death for us ; not 
till the comforting sense that our sins have been forgiven visits and 
cheers our heart, can we love our Saviour as he should be loved, and 
as he wishes to be loved by us. It is when we know how much it is 
that we have owed, and how much it is that we have been forgiven, 
that the bond gets closest that binds us to him — a complex, ever- 
growing, ever-tightening bond, the more that is forgiven ever reveal- 
ing more that needs forgiveness ; with us as with this woman, as with 
all true believers, the humility, the penitence, the faith, the love, the 
peace that all accompany or flow forth from the granted forgiveness, 
all intensifying each other, all leading us more simply, more entirely, 
more habitually, more confidingly to Christ, for mercy to pardon and 
grace to help us in every time of need. 



VIII. 

The Collision with the Pharisees — The First Para- 
bles — The JStilling of the Tempest — The Demo- 
niac of Gadara.* 

Our Lord's second circuit through Galilee, if not more extensive, 
was more public and formal than the first. He was now constantly 
attended by the twelve men whom he had chosen out of the general 
company of his followers, while certain women, Mary, Joanna, Su- 
sanna, and many others, some of them of good position, waited on 
him, ministering to him of their substance. The crowds that gath- 
ered round him wherever he went; the wonder, joy and gratitude 
with which his miracles, particularly those recent ones of raising the 
dead, were hailed ; the impression his discourses had created, and the 
steps that he had now obviously taken towards organizing a distinct 
body of disciples, fanned into an open flame the long- smouldering 

Matt. 12 : 22-50 ; 13 ; 8 : 23-34 ; Mark 3: 22-30 ; 4 ; 5 : 1-20 : Luke 11 : 14-54 ; 
8:22-39. 



i 



THE COLLISION WITH THE PHARISEES. 251 

fire of Pharisaic opposition. The Pharisees of Galilee may not at 
first have been as quick and deep in their resentment as were their 
brethren of Jerusalem, neither had they the same kind of instruments 
in their hands to employ against him. But their resentment grew as 
the profound discord between the whole teaching and life of Jesus 
and their own more fully developed itself, and it was zealously foster- 
ed by a deputation that came down from the capital. It had already 
once and again broken out, as when they had charged him with being 
a Sabbath-breaker and a blasphemer. On these occasions Jesus had 
satisfied himself with rebuking on the spot the men by whom the 
charges had been preferred. But he had not yet broken with the 
Pharisees as a party, nor denounced them either privately to his dis- 
ciples or publicly to the multitude. But now, at the close of his 
second circuit through Galilee, after nearly a year's labor bestowed 
upon that province, the collision came, and the whole manner of his 
speech and action towards them was changed. 

Early in the forenoon of one of his longest and most laborious 
days in Capernaum, there was brought to him one possessed with a 
devil, blind and dumb. Blindness and dumbness, whether springing 
from original organic defect or induced by disease, he had often before 
cured. But here, underlying both, was the deeper spiritual malady 
of possession. Jesus cast the devil out, and the immediate effect of 
the dispossession was the recovery of the powers of speech and visit n. 
There must have been something peculiar in the case. Perhaps it 
lay in this, that whereas dumbness in all ordinary cases springs either 
from congenital deafness or from some defect in the organs of speech, 
it was due here to neither of these causes. The man could hear as 
well as others, and once he had spoken as well as they. But from 
the time the devil entered he had been tongue-tied, had tried to 
speak but could not. A new and horrible kind of dumbness had 
come upon him, the closing of his lips by an inward constraint that, 
struggle as he might, he could not overcome. St. Luke speaks only 
of the dumbness, as if in it more than in the blindness lay the pecu- 
liarity of the case. Luke 11 : 14. St. Matthew records another 
instance of the ejection of a devil from one who was dumb, in which 
the same effect followed ; the dumb speaking as soon as the devil was 
cast out. Matt. 9 : 33. It is at least very remarkable that it was in 
connection with this class of cases only that the double result appear- 
ed, of an extraordinary commotion among the people and an exti aoi*- 
dinary allegation put forward by the Pharisees. 

The casting out of devils had been one of the eailiest and most 
common of our Lord's miracles; always carefully distinguished by 



252 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

the evangelists from the healing of ordinary diseases; awakening 
generally not more wonder, perhaps not so much, as some of the 
bodily cures. If the testimony of Josephus is to be credited, demo- 
niac possession was common at this period, and exorcism by the Jews 
themselves not unfrequent. But when a dumb devil was cast out, 
and instantly the man began to speak, we are told that in one 
instance "the multitudes marvelled, saying, It was never so seen in 
Israel;" (Matt. 9 : 33;) and in another, "All the people were amazed, 
and said, Is not this the Son of David ?" Matt. 12 : 23. Here almost 
for the first time was an open expression of faith in Jesus as the 
Messiah, who was known and spoken of all over Judea as the Son of 
David. Whatever his words and actions might have implied, Jesus 
had not publicly taken this title to himself — claimed to be the Mes- 
siah ; but now the people of themselves begin to think that it must be 
so — that by none other than he could works like these be done. The 
man whose character the Pharisees had been attempting to malign, 
whose influence with the people they had been doing their utmost to 
undermine, is not only hailed as a teacher sent from God, but as a 
prophet, nay, more than a prophet, the very Son of David. What 
is to be said and done? The facts of the case they do not, they 
cannot deny. That the man's dumbness had been nothing but a 
common dumbness, that there had been no evil spirit in him to 
be cast out of him, they do not venture to suggest. Those ingen- 
ious scribes that have come down from Jerusalem can see but one 
way out of the difficulty. They do not hesitate to suggest it, nor 
their friends beside them to adopt it; and so they go about the crowd 
that is standing lost in wonder, saying contemptuously, " This fellow 
doth not cast out devils but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils." 
A winebibber, a gluttonous man, a friend of publicans and sinners, 
a Sabbath-breaker, a blasphemer, they had called him, but here is 
the last and vilest thing that calumny can say of him — that he is in 
league with Satan, and that it is to his connection with the devil, and 
to that alone, that he owes all his wisdom and his power. How does 
Jesus meet this calumny ? How does he speak of and to the men 
who were guilty of forging and circulating it? They were busy among 
the crowd secretly propagating the slander, but they must not think 
that he was unconscious or careless of what they were saying of him. 
He calls them unto him, (Mark 3 : 23,) and they come. His accusers 
and he stand forth before the assembled multitude, fairly confronted. 
Fixst, in the simplest, plainest manner, obviously for the sake of con- 
vincing any of the simple-minded people who might be ready to adopt 
this new solution of the secret of his power, he exposes its foolish- 



THE COLLISION WITH THE PHARISEES. 253 

n«ss and injustice. There was, he assumes, a prince of the devils, 
who had a kingdom of his own, opposed to the kingdom of God. 
That kingdom of darkness might admit of much internal discord, but 
in one thing it was and must ever he united — in its antagonism to the 
kingdom of light. No more than any other kingdom, or city, or 
house, could it stand, were it, in that respect, divided against itself. 
Yet it was such kind of division that these Pharisees were attributing 
to it. Their own sons undertook to cast out devils : was it by Beel- 
zebub that they did it? If not, why cast the imputation of doing 
so upon him ? None but a strong one could enter the house of the 
human spirit, as the devil was seen to enter it in these cases of pos- 
session. It must be a stronger than he who binds him, and casts 
him forth, and strips him of all his spoils. This was what they had 
just seen Jesus do; and if he, by the mighty power of God, had done 
so, then no doubt the kingdom was come unto them — come in his 
person, his teaching, his work. He — Jesus — stood now the visible 
head and representative of the kingdom, in the midst of them. To 
come to him was to enter that kingdom — to be with him was to be 
on the side of that kingdom : and such was its nature, such the claims 
he made, that there could be no neutrality, no middle ground to be 
occupied. He that was not with him was against him ; he that gath- 
ered not with him was scattering abroad. Much there was in the 
spirit and conduct of many then before him whom the application of 
this test must bring in as guilty; but let them know that all manner 
of sin and blasphemy might be forgiven. In ignorance and unbelief 
they might speak against the Son of man, and yet not put themselves 
beyond the pale of mercy ; but in presence of that Divine spirit and 
power in which he spake and acted, not only to ignore it, but to mis- 
represent and malign it, as these Pharisees had done, was to enter 
upon a path of wilful, perverse resistance to the Spirit of God, which, 
if pursued, would land the men who took and followed it in a guilt 
for which there would be no forgiveness, either here or hereafter ; no 
forgiveness, not because any kind or degree of guilt could exhaust 
the divine mercy or exceed its power, but because the pursuers of 
such a path, sooner or later, would reach such a state of mind, and 
heart, and habit, that all chance or hope of their ever being disposed 
to fulfil, or capable of fulfilling, those conditions upon which aloue 
mercy is or can be dispensed, would vanish away. The blasphemy 
against the Holy Ghost, which never hath forgiveness, lies not in any 
single word or deed. Jesus, though not obscurely hinting that in the 
foul calumny that had been uttered there lay the elements of the 
unpardonable offence, does not distinctly say that the men before 



254 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

him never would or could be forgiven for uttering it. Hh words are 
words of warning rather than of judgment. A monstrous accusation 
had been made, one in which if the men who had made it persever- 
ed, they would be displaying thereby the very temper and spirit of 
such blasphemy against the Holy Ghost as never could be forgiven. 
It was out of an evil heart that the evil word had been spoken. It 
was by a corrupt tree that this corrupt fruit had been borne, and the 
heart would get worse, the tree more rotten, unless now made better. 
Such bitter words of ungodly malice and despite as the Pharisees 
had spoken, were but outward indices of the state of things within. 
Yet such good signs were words in general, that "Verily," said Jesus, 
"I say unto you. . . . By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by 
thy words thou shalt be condemned." 

The men whom Jesus thus publicly rebuked — characterizing them 
as a generation of vipers — for the moment were silenced. Some of 
their party, however, now interposed. Jesus had unequivocally 
asserted that his works had been wrought by none other than the 
mighty power of God. Let Him prove this as Moses, Joshua, Sam- 
uel, Elijah had done. The works themselves were not enough to do 
this. The popular belief was that demons and false gods could work 
signs on earth. It was the true God only who could give signs from 
heaven. Such a sign they had asked Christ to show. Luke 9 : 16. 
" The people gathered thick together," we are told, to hear Christ's 
answer; but, as at other times when the same demand was made, our 
Lord would point to no other sign than that of the most remarkable 
foreshadowing in Old Testament times of his own resurrection from 
the dead. This allusion to the extraordinary incident in the history 
of Jonas was doubly unsatisfactory to his hearers. It was no sign 
from above, but rather One from below. It was a sign of that of 
which they had as yet no conception — in which they had no faith — it 
carried with it to them no additional or confirmatory evidence. No 
other sign, however, was to be given to a generation which was act- 
ing worse than the heathen inhabitants of Nineveh, the Gentile queen 
of the south; a greater than Jonas, a greater than Solomon was 
among them, yet they despised his wisdom and would not repent at 
his call. A brighter light than had ever dawned upon them was now 
shining — nay, was set up conspicuously for them to behold it ; but 
there must be an eye within to see, as well as a light without to look 
at, before any true illumination can take place. And if that eye be 
evil— be in any way incapacitated for true discernment, whatever the 
external effulgence be, the body remains full of darkness. Even such 
a darkness was now settling over a people who were going to present 



THE COLLISION WITH THE PHARISEES. 255 

but too sad a type of what was sometimes seen in cases of demoniac 
possession, when an unclean spirit., for a time cast out, returned with 
seven other spirits more wicked than itself. From among the Jewish 
people, from and after the Babylonish captivity, the old demon of 
idolatry had been ejected. For a time the house had been swept and 
garnished, but now a sevenfold worse infatuation was coming upon 
this generation, to drive it on to a deadlier catastrophe. 

The exciting intelligence that in the presence of a vast multitude 
Jesus had been accused by the Pharisees of being nothing else than 
an emissary and ally of the devil ; that, not satisfied with defending 
himself against the charge, he had in turn become their accuser, and 
broken out into the most open and unrestrained denunciation of their 
whole order; that the feud which for months past had been secretly 
gathering strength had ended at last in an open rupture, was carried 
to the house in which Mary and the Lord's brothers were dwelling. 
A. fatal thing it seems to them for him to have plunged into such a 
deadly strife with the most powerful party in the country. They will 
try what they can to draw him out of it. They hasten to the spot, 
and find the crowd so large, the press so great, that they cannot get 
near him. They send their message in to him. " Behold," says one 
who is standing next to Jesus, " thy mother and thy brethren stand 
without, desiring to speak with thee." A mother who, if fond enough, 
was yet so fearful, who once before had tried to dictate to him, and 
had been checked at Cana; brethren who thought that he Avas beside 
himself, none of whom as yet believed on him— what right had they 
to interrupt him at his work — to move him from his purpose ? " Who 
is my mother?" said he to the man who conveyed to him the mes- 
sage, "and who are my brethren?" Then pausing, looking "round 
about on them which sat about him," stretching forth his hands 
towards his disciples, " Behold," he exclaimed, " my mother and my 
brethren ! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in 
heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother." A woman 
in the crowd, who has been standing lost in a mere human admira- 
tion of him, hears his mother spoken of, and cannot in the fulness of 
her womanly emotion but call her blessed. " Yea, rather blessed," 
?aid Jesus to her, " are they that hear the word of God, and keep it." 

So, when in the very heart of his mission-work on earth they 
spake to him about the closest human ties, his nearest earthly rela- 
tives — close as these were, and willing as he was in their own mode 
and sphere to acknowledge them, so resolutely did Jesus waive them 
aside, so sublimely did he rise above them, setting himself forth as 
the Elder Brother of that whole family in heaven and earth named 



258 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

by his name, a^ f j-^g ^ rue c h arac ter, but little disposition *o receive 
came not tq^ ag tne Redeemer of mankind, but little capacity to 
earthly a^ ^ ne more secret tilings of that spiritual kingdom which it 
n nis office to establish and extend. And as he had altered his 
induct towards his secret enemies by dragging out their opposition 
to the light and openly denouncing them, so now he alters his con 
duct towards his professed friends by clothing his higher instructions 
to them in a new and peculiar garb. As he left the house in which 
the hasty mid-day meal was taken, the crowd gathered round him — 
increased in numbers, a keener edge put upon its curiosity by what 
had just occurred. Followed by this crowd, he goes down to the 
lake-side ; finds the press of the people round about him oppressive 
and inconvenient, sees a boat lying in close to the beach, enters it, 
sits down, and, separated from them by a little strip of water, ad- 
dresses the multitude that lined the shore. He speaks about a sower, 
and how it fared with the seed he sowed: 'Some of it fell by the 
wayside, and some upon stony places, and some among thorns, and 
some upon good soil.' He speaks about a field in which good seed 
was sown by day but tares by night, and how both grew up, and 
some would have them separated ; but the householder to whom the 
field belonged would not hear of it, but would have both grow together 
till the harvest. He speaks of a man casting seed into his ground; 
and finding that by night and by day, whether he slept or woke, was 
watching and tending, or doing nothing about it, that seed secretly 
grew up, he knew not how. He speaks of the least of seeds growing 
up into the tallest of herbs ; of the leaven working in the three meas- 
ures of meal till the whole was leavened; and he tells his hearers that 
the kingdom of heaven is like unto each of the things that he describes. 
His hearers are all greatly interested, for it is about plain, familiar 
things of the house, the garden, the field that he speaks ; and yet a 
strange expression of mingled surprise and perplexity sits upon every 
countenance. The disciples within the boat share these sentiments 
equally with the people upon the shore. Nothing seems easier than 
to understand these little stories of common life ; but why has Jesus 
told them? What from his lips can they mean? What has the 
kingdom of heaven to do with them? Teaching by parables was a 
common way of instruction with the Jewish Rabbis. But it had not 
been in the first instance adopted by Christ ; they had not as yet 
heard a single parable from his lips ; and now he uses nothing else- * 
parable follows parable, as if that were the only instrument of the 
teacher that Jesus cared to use. And besides the entire novelty of 
his employment of the parabolic method, there is that haze, that 



THE FIRST PARABLES. 259 

thick obscurity which covers the real meaning of the parables he 
utters. The disciples take the first opportunity that offers itself of 
speaking to him privately, and putting to him the question, "Why 
speakest thou to them in parables?" A question which they would 
never have put but for the circumstance that they had never before 
known him employ this kind of discourse. Now mark the answer to 
the question : " Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries 
of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. For whoso- 
ever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance ; 
but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he 
hath. Therefore speak I to them in parables : because they seeing 
see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. 
And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hear- 
ing ye shall hear, and shall not understand ; and seeing ye shall see, 
and shall not perceive : for this people's heart is waxed gross ; and 
their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed ; lest 
at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, 
and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and 
I should heal them." Matt. 13 : 1-15. 

It was partly then for the purpose of concealment that, upon this 
occasion, these parables were spoken. Those before whose eyes this 
veil was drawn had already been tried with a different kind of speech. 
Most important truths had been announced to them in the simplest 
and plainest language, but they had shut their minds and hearts 
against them. And now, as a righteous judgment upon them for hav- 
ing acted thus, these mysteries of the kingdom, which might have 
been presented to them in another and more transparent guise, are 
folded up in the concealing drapery of these parables. Speaking 
generally, parables are meant to make things plainer, not more ob- 
scure ; and of many of our Lord's parables, such as those of the Good 
Samaritan, the Unjust Judge, the Pharisee and the Publican, it is true 
that neither by those who first heard them uttered, nor by any who 
have read them since, has there been the slightest doubt or uncer- 
tainty as to their meaning. But there is another and a larger 
class of the parables of Christ to which this description does not 
apply, which were not understood by those to whom they were first 
addressed, which may still be misunderstood, which, instead of being 
homely tales illustrative of the simplest moral and religious truths, 
the simplest moral and religious duties, are figurative descriptions, 
prophetic allegories, in which the true nature of Christ's spiritual 
kingdom, the manner of its establishment and extension, and all its 
after varied fortunes are portrayed. It was to this class that the 



.260 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

parables just spoken by our Saviour belonged. And there was mercy 
as well as judgment in their employment. Behind their concealing 
drapery bright lights were burning, the very darkness thrown around 
intended to stimulate the eye to a keener, steadier gaze. As his dis- 
ciples had dealt w T ith the instructions that had previously come from 
his lips differently from those who seeing saw not, hearing would not 
understand, so now Jesus deals differently with them as to the para- 
bles. They appear to have been at first as much in the dark as to 
their meaning as was the general audience on the shore. But they 
were willing, even anxious to be taught. When the cloud came down 
on the teachings .of their Master, and these dark sayings were uttered, 
they longed to enter into that cloud to gaze upon the light which 
burned within. They came seeking, and they found ; knocking, and 
the door was opened to them. To them it was given to know the 
mysteries of the kingdom ; but to the others, uncaring for it, unpre- 
pared for it, and unworthy of it as they were, it was not given. By 
a private and full explanation of the two first and leading parables, 
those of the sower and the tares and the wheat, Jesus put into his 
disciples' hands the key to all the eight parables that he delivered ; 
taught them to see therein the first plantation of the church — the 
field, the world — the good seed, the word of God ; the entrance and 
the allowed continued presence of obstruction and opposition — the 
silent and secret growth of God's empire over human hearts; the 
small enlarging into the great; its persuasive transforming power; 
its preciousness, whether found after diligent search or coming into 
the possessor's hands almost at unawares ; the end of all in the gath- 
ering out of that spiritual kingdom of the Lord of all that should 
offend. 

What was true, locally and temporarily, of the instructions of 
that single day, of that small section of our Lord's teaching, is true 
of the whole body of those disclosures of God made to us in the Bible. 
There are things simple and there are thing obscure ; things so plain 
that he who runs may read; things so deep that he only can under- 
stand who has within him some answering spiritual consciousness or 
aspiration, out of which the true interpretation springs. We must 
first compass the simple, if we would fathom the obscure. We must 
receive into honest hearts and make good use of the plainest declara- 
tions of the divine Word, if we would have that lamp kindled within 
us, by whose light the more recondite of its sayings can alone be 
understood. And if we refuse to do so, if we will not follow the 
course here so plainly marked out for us, if we turn our eyes from 
that which they could see if they would, if we stop our ears against 



THE FIRST PARABLES. 261 

that vThich tliey could understand, if we follow not the heavenly 
lights already given so far as they can carry us, have we any right 
to complain if at last our feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and 
we look for light, and, behold, it is turned into darkness? It is in an 
inner, remote sanctuary, the true Shekinah, where the light of God's 
gracious presence still shineth, to be approached with a humble, 
tractable spirit, the prayer upon our lips and in our heart, "What 1 
know not, Lord, teach thou me ; I beseech thee show me thy glory." 
It is not in the intellect, it is in the conscience, in the* heart, that the 
finest and most powerful organs of spiritual vision lie. There are 
seals that cover up many passages and pages of the Bible, which no 
light or fire of genius can dissolve ; there are hidden riches here that 
no labor of mere learned research can get at and spread forth. But 
those seals melt like the snow-wreath beneath the warm breathings 
of desire and prayer, and those riches drop spontaneously into the 
bosom of the humble and the contrite, the poor and the needy. 

Five parables appear to have been addressed by Jesus to the 
multitude from the boat, their delivery broken by the private expla- 
nation to the disciples of the parable of the Sower. Landing, and 
sending the multitude away, Jesus entered into the house. There 
the disciples again applied to him, and he declared unto them the 
parable of the Tares. Thereafter, the three shorter parables of the 
Treasure, the Pearl, and the Net were spoken to the disciples by 
themselves. The long, laborious day was now nearly over, and in 
the dwellmg which served him as a home while in Capernaum, he 
might have sought and found repose. Again, however, we see him 
by the lake-side; again under the pressure of the multitudes. Seek- 
ing rest and seeing no hope of it for him in Capernaum, Jesus said, 
"Let us pass over unto the other side." That other eastern side of 
the lake of Galilee offered a singular contrast to the western one. 
Its will and lonely hills, thinly peopled by a race, the majority of 
whom were Gentiles, were seldom visited by the inhabitants of the 
plain of Gennesaret. Now-a-days both sides of the lake are desert; 
yet still there is but little intercourse between them. Few travellers 
venture to traverse the eastern shore ; fewer venture far into the 
regions which lie behind, which are now occupied wholly by an Arab 
population. As offering to him in some one or other of the deep val- 
leys which cleave its hills and run down into the sea, a shady and 
secure retreat for a day or two from the bustle and fatigue of his 
life in Galilee, Jesus proposes a passage across the lake. All is soon 
ready; and they hurriedly embark, taking Jesus in "even as he was, 1 ' 
with no preparation for the voyage. It was, however, but a sbor* 



262 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

sail of six or eight miles. Night falls on them by the way, and with 
the night one of those terrible hurricanes by which a lake which lies 
so low, and is bounded on all sides by hills, is visited at times. The 
tempest smote the waters, the waves ran high and smote the little 
bark. She reeled and swayed, and at each lurch took in more and 
more water till she was nearly rilled, and once filled, with the next 
wave that rolls into her she must sink. They were practised hands 
that navigated this boat, who knew well the lake in all its moods, 
not open to unreasonable fear; but now fear comes upon them, and 
they are ready to give up all hope. Where all this while is he at 
whose bidding they had embarked? They had been too busy for 
the time with the urgent work required by the sudden squall, to think 
of him ; the mantle of the night's thick darkness may have hidden 
him from their view. But now in their extremity they seek for him, 
and find him "in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow." 
Unbroken by all the noise of winds and waves without, and all the 
tumult of those toiling hands within, how quiet and deep must that 
rest of the wearied one have been! They have some difficulty in 
awaking him, and they do it somewhat roughly. "Master! Master!" 
they cry to him, "save us! We perish! Carest thou not that we 
perish?" With a word of rebuke for their great fear and little faith, 
Jesus rises, and speaking to the boisterous elements as one might 
speak to a boisterous child, he says to the winds and the waves, 
"Peace, be still!" Nature owns at once the sovereignty of the Lord. 
The winds cease their blowing — the waves subside — instantly there 
is a great calm. Those who had sought and roused the sleeping 
Saviour fall back into their former places, resume their former work ; 
at the measured stroke of their oars the little vessel glides silently 
over the placid waters. All quiet now, where but a few minutes 
before all was tumult ,* few words are spoken during the rest of the 
voyage, the rowers only whispering to each other as they rowed: 
"What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the waves 
obey him?" 

Jesus lying this moment under the weakness of exhausted strength, 
rising the next in all the might of manifested omnipotence : in close 
proximity, in quick succession, the humanity and the divinity that 
were in him exhibited themselves. Though suddenly roused to see 
himself in a position quite new to him, and evidently of great peril, 
Jesus has no fear. His first thought is not of the danger, his first 
word is not to the tempest, his first care is not for the safety of the 
body, it is for the state of the spirit of those who wake him from his 
slumbers , nor is it until he has rebuked their fears that he removes 



THE DEMONIAC OF GADARA. 263 

the cause ; but then he does so, and does it effectually, by the word 
of his power. And so long as the life we are living shall be thought 
and spoken of as a voyage, so long shall this night scene on the lake 
of Galilee supply the imagery by which many a passage in the his- 
tory of the church, and many in the history of the individual believer, 
ihall be illustrated. Sleeping or waking, let Christ be in the vessel 
and it is safe. The tempest may come, our faith be small, our fear 
be great, but still if in our fear we have so much faith as to cry to 
him to save us, still in the hour of our greatest need will he arise to 
our help, and though he may have to blame us for not cherishing a 
livelier trust and making an earlier application, he will not suffer the 
winds or the waves to overwhelm us. 

The storm is past, the night is over, the morning dawns, the 
opposite coast of the Gadarenes is reached. Here, then, in these 
lonely places there will be some rest for Jesus, some secure repose. 
Not yet, not instantly. Soon as he lands, immediately, from some 
neighboring place of graves* there comes forth a wild and frenzied 
man, a man possessed by many devils ; for a long time so possessed, 
exceeding fierce so that no man could tame him. They had bound 
him with fetters and with chains ; the fetters he had plucked asun- 
der, the chains had been broken by him. Flying from the haunts of 
men, flinging off all his garments, the naked, howling maniac lies 
day and night among the tombs, crying and cutting himself with 
stones ; so fiercely assaulting all who approached him that no man 
might pass by that way. From his lair among the graves the devil- 
haunted madman rushes upon Jesus. His neighbors had all fled terri- 
fied before him. This stranger who has just landed flies not, but tran- 
quilly contemplates his approach. He who had so lately brought 
the great calm down into the bosom of the troubled lake, is about 
now to infuse a greater calm into this troubled spirit. The voice 
that an hour or two before had said to the winds and the waves, 
" Peace, be still," has already spoken, while yet the poor demoniac is 
afar off, to the possessing devil that was within, and said, " Come out 
of him, thou unclean spirit." If underneath that dark and terrible 
tyranny of the indwelling demons there still survived within the man 
some spark of his native independence, some glimmering conscious- 
ness of what he once had been and might be again, were but those 
usurpers of his spirit quieted; if something of the man still were 
there, crouching, groaning, travailing beneath the intolerable pres- 
sure that drove him into madness — what a new and strange sensation 
must have entered this region of his consciousness when the devils 
* As to the locality in which the miracle was wrought, see note on p. 337. 



264 THE LIFE OE CHEIST. 

which had been rioting within him, claiming and using him as aU 
their own, heard that word of Jesus, and in their terror began to 
cry out, as in the presence of one their acknowledged Superior and 
Lord ! What a new light of hope must have come into that wild 
and haggard eye as it gazed upon that mysterious being, hailed by 
ihe devils as the Son of the Most Sigh God ! His relief, indeed, was 
not immediate ; the devils did not at once depart. There was a short 
and singular colloquy between Christ and them. They beseech, they 
adjure him not to torment them before the time, not to send them 
down at once into the abyss, or if he were determined to give liberty 
to their human captive, then not to drive them from the neighbor- 
hood, which, perhaps was then* only earthly allotted haunt, but to 
suffer them to enter into a neighboring herd of swine. The permis- 
sion was given. They entered into the swine — how we know not, 
operating upon them how and with what intent we know not. All 
we have before us is the fact, that the whole herd ran violently down 
a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters. What became 
of the devils then ? As the dumb beasts went down into the waters, 
did they go down into a darker, deeper depth, to be kept there in 
chains and darkness to the judgment of the great day? It is not 
said that the devils purposely destroyed the swine. It no doubt was 
their entrance and the frenzy into which that entrance drove the ani- 
mals, that made them plunge headlong into the lake. But who shall 
tell us whether in their reckless and intense love of mischief the 
foul spirits did not here outwit themselves, creating an impulse 
that they could not curb, destroying the new habitation they had 
chosen, and by their own inconsistent and suicidal acts bringing 
down upon themselves the very fate from which they had prayed 
to be delivered ? We know far too little of the world of spirits to 
affirm or to deny here ; far too little for us either mockingly to reject 
the whole as an idle tale, or presuniingly to speculate as if the mys- 
teries of the great kingdom of darkness stood revealed. It is true, 
indeed, that whatever was the design or anticipation of the devils 
in entering into the swine, the result must have been known to Jesus. 
Knowing then, beforehand, how great the destruction here of prop- 
erty and animal life would be, why was the permission given? We 
shall answer that question when any man will tell us how many swine 
one human spirit is worth — why devils were permitted to enter any^ 
where or do any mischief upon this earth — why such large and suc- 
cessive losses of human and bestial life are ever suffered, the agencies 
producing which are as much under the control of the Creator as 
these devils were under that of Christ. To take up the one single 



THE DEMONIAC OF GADAEA. 266 

instance in which you can connect the loss of life, not directly with 
the personal agency but evidently with the permission of the Saviour, 
and to take exception to that, while the mystery of the large suffer- 
ance of sin and misery in this Avorld lies spread out everywhere before 
and around us, is it not unreasonable and unfair? We do uot deny 
th it there is a difficulty here. We are not offering any explanation 
of this difficulty that we consider to be satisfactory. We are only 
pleading, first, that in such ignorance as ours is, and with a thou- 
sand times greater difficulties everywhere besetting our faith in God, 
this single difficulty should throw no impediment in the way of our 
faith in Jesus Christ. 

The keepers of the herd, who had waited to see the issue, went 
and told in the adjoining village and in the country round about all 
that had happened. At the tidings the whole population of the 
neighborhood came out to meet Jesus. They found him, with the man 
who had been possessed with devils in the manner they all knew so 
well, sitting at his feet — already clothed, in his right mind, all traces 
of his possession, save the marks of the bonds and of the fetters, 
gone. They were alarmed, annoyed, offended at what had happened. 
There was a mystery about the man, who had such power over the 
world of spirits, and used it in such a way, that repelled rather than 
attracted them. They might have thought and felt differently 
had they looked aright at their poor afflicted brother, upon whom 
such a happy change had been wrought. But they thought more of 
swine that had perished than of the man who had been saved ; and 
they besought Jesus to depart out of their coasts. He did not need 
to have the entreaty addressed to him a second time ; he complied at 
once — prepared immediately to reembark, and we do not read that 
he ever returned to that region — they never had another opportunity 
of seeing and hearing him. Nor is it the habit of Jesus to press his 
presence upon the unwilling. Still he has many ways of coming into 
our coasts, and still have we many ways of intimating to him our un- 
willingness that he should abide there. He knows how to interpret 
the inward turning away of our thoughts and heart from him — he 
knows when the unspoken language of any human spirit to him is — 
Depart ; and if he went away so readily when asked on earth, who 
shall assure us that he may not as readily take us at our word, and 
when we wish it, go — go, it may be, never to return ? 

Christ heard and at once complied with the request of the Gada- 
renes. But there was another petition presented to him at the same 
time, with which he did not comply. From the moment that he had 
been healed, the demoniac had never left his side, never thought of 



266 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

parting froni him, never desired to return to home, or friends, v>r kin- 
dred. A bond stronger than all others bound him to his deliverer. 
When he saw Jesus make the movement to depart, he accompanied 
him to the shore, he went with him to the boat. And as he fell there 
at his feet, we can almost fancy him taking up Ruth's words, and say- 
ing, " Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after 
thee : for whither thou goest, I will go ; and where thou lodgest, I 
will lodge ; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God." 
He is ready, he is anxious to forsake all and follow Jesus, but he is 
not permitU/d. "Go home to thine own house and to thy friends," 
said Jesus to him, " and tell them how great things the Lord hath 
done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee." It was to a hea- 
then home, to friends that knew little about the Lord, and cared little 
for such knowledge, to whom he was to go. No small trial to be torn 
thus from the Saviour's side, to go and reside daily among those who 
had sent that Saviour away from them. But he did it — did more 
even than he was told to do ; not in his own house alone, nor among 
his own friends alone, but throughout the whole Gentile district of 
Decapolis he published abroad the great things that Jesus had done 
for him. Better for the man himself, too long accustomed to dwell 
alone, taking a tincture of the solitary places in which he dwelt into 
his own spirit, to mix thus freely and widely with his fellow-men; 
and better undoubtedly it was for those among whom he lived, acting 
as the representative of him whom in person they had rejected, but 
who seem to have lent a more willing ear to the man of their own 
district and kindred, for we are told that as he spake of Jesus, " all 
men did marvel," and some, let us hope, did believe. 

Let one closing glance be given at the strange picture which this 
passage in our Saviour's life presents. It abounds in lights and shad- 
ows, in striking contrasts — the meanest selfishness confronted with 
the purest, noblest love. Reckless frenzy, abject terror, profound 
attention, devoted attachment, rapidly succeed each other in him 
who, brought into closest union with the highest and the lowest of 
the powers of the spiritual world, presents to us a condensed epitome 
of the great conflict between good and evil — between Christ and 
Satan — in the domain of the human spirit. Undoubtedly it standi? 
the most remarkable instance of dispossession in the gospel narra- 
tive, revealing to us at once the depth of that degradation to which 
our poor humanity may sink, and the height of that elevation to 
which, through the power and infinite compassion of the Saviour, it 
may be raised. Was it for the purpose of teaching us more mani- 
festly that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil, that in that 



THE DEMONIAC OF GADAKA. 267 

age of His appearance devils were permitted to exercise such strange 
dominion over men ? Was it to bring into visible and personal col- 
lision tlie heads of the two opposite spiritual communities— -the 
Prince of Light and the prince of darkness — and to make more visible 
to all men the supremacy of the one over the other? Was it that, a^ 
the Sun of righteousness rose in one quarter of the heavens, \\\ ■ >n 
the opposite a cloud of unwonted blackness and darkness was allowed 
to gather, that with all the greater brightness there might shine forth 
the bow of promise for our race? Whatever be the explanation, the 
fact lies before us that demoniacal possessions did then take place, 
and were not continued. But though the spirits of evil are not 
allowed in that particular manner to occupy and torment and degrade 
us, have they been withdrawn from all access to and all influence 
over our souls ? With so many hints given us in the Holy Scriptures 
that we wrestle not with flesh and blood alone, but with angels and 
principalities and powers of darkness ; that there are devices of Satan 
of which it becomes us not to remain ignorant ; that the great adver- 
sary goeth about seeking whom he may devour; with the command 
laid upon us, " Eesist the devil, and he will flee from you ;" with the 
promise given, " The Lord shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly;" 
are we not warranted to believe, and should we not be ever acting on 
the conviction, that our souls are the sphere of an unseen conflict, in 
which rival spirits are struggling for mastery ? When some light- 
winged fancy carries off the seed of the word as it drops in our soul, 
may not that fancy have come at Satan's call, and be doing Satan's 
work ? When the pleasures and honors and riches of this world are 
invested with a false and seductive splendor, and we are tempted to 
pursue them as our chief good, may he not have a hand in our temp- 
tation who held out the kingdoms of this world and all the glory of 
them before the Saviour's eye ? But however it may be with evil 
spirits, we know that evil passions have their haunt and home within 
our hearts. These, as a strong man armed, keep the house till the 
stronger than they appears. That stronger one is Christ. To him let 
us bring our souls ; and if it please him to bid any unclean spirit go 
forth, at his feet let us be sitting, and may he make us willing, what- 
ever our own desire might be, to go wherever he would have us go, 
asid do whatever he would have us do. 



:67a THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 



This lesson leads up to the great climax or crisis in the ministry 
of our Lord before the Passion Week. Up to the point where he sends 
the multitude away after feeding the five thousand and where he 
gives this discourse in the synagogue in Capernaum his influence and 
popularity with the masses had been steadily growing. Apparently 
greater numbers were constantly coming to believe in him and the 
occasions were increasing when expressions were used that pointed to 
the recognition of him as the Messiah. 

It is one of the clearest proofs of his heavenly discernment and 
divine poise that Christ was not betrayed into the least unwise or rash 
step, as a mere man would have been, by the rising tide of enthusiasm. 

What then had Christ really done thus far? He had securely 
laid the foundation of faith in himself as the Son of God and Saviour 
in the hearts of the twelve (or perhaps, more strictly speaking, the 
eleven) and of a few other humble people throughout the land. 

All the other seeming followers, who were only eager for an earthly 
Messiah offering to throw off the Roman yoke or to supply them with 
the loaves and fishes, Christ now sifts out by this strange discourse, 
in which he says that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood if 
they would have life in them. From this time onward his principal 
work will consist in training his apostles for the work he is to commit 
to them. 



PART II. MAIN MINISTRY IN GALILEE. 

Study 9. Climax of Christ's Public Ministry. 

(1) Mission of the twelve apostles 268-274 

a. The unique school in which they have been trained 268 

b. They are sent out two by two 269 

c. Their very simple equipment 269 

d. They are to stay in the first friendly house 269 

e. They are to avoid formalities 270 

/. Actual work of the twelve and of Christ and their reunion 273, 274 

(2) More permanent discipleship and apostleship in Christ's vision. . 270-274 

a. His representatives must expect misconception and ill-treat- 
ment , 270-271 

b. They are to be open and fearless in testimony 271 

c. Christ must be first in their affections 271, 272 

d. Service great or small is their one aim 272, 273 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 2676 

(3) Death of John the Baptist 274-276 

a. Imprisoned because of his brave rebuke of Herod Antipas. . . 274 

b. Sudden execution at the demand of Herodias 275 

c. His mission worthily accomplished 276 

(4) Feeding of the five thousand 277-280 

a. Impressions made by the death of John 277 

b. Jesus plans a respite for himself and the apostles 277 

c. They cross the lake by boat 277, 278 

d. The people outgo them by land 278 

e. Jesus receives them, and teaches and heals 278 

/. He then multiplies the loaves and fishes and feeds the 

multitude 278-280 

g. They hail him as Messiah and wish to make him king 280 

h. He sends the apostles away by boat and the people by land . 280 

i. He goes up into a mountain to pray 280, 281 

j. Spiritual meaning of miracles and of this one 283, 284 

(5) Jesus walking on the water 281, 282 

a. The twelve struggling with the storm 281 

6. Jesus comes to them walking on the water 281 

c. Peter's request is granted to come to him 281 

d. He sinks when faith fails, but is lifted up and comes with 

Jesus into the "boat 282 

e. The wind is stilled and they are at the land 282 

(6) Healing work in the land of Gennesaret 285 

(7) Discourse in the synagogue at Capernaum 285-296 

a. Hitherto Christ has spoken more of the kingdom than of 

himself 285, 286 

b. This discourse marks the transition point in his teachings . . . 286 

c. Jesus would sift out those seeking mere material good 286, 287 

d. He therefore says, "Labor not for the meat which per- 

isheth" 287 

e. The real service of God is to believe on Christ 287 

/. Christ presents himself as the bread of life 288-292 

g. Many of his disciples go away 292 

h. He challenges the faith of the twelve 292 

i. Peter answers in a true confession of faith 292 

j. The discourse shows that our true life centers in Christ 293-296 



2G8 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

IX. 

The Mission of the Twelve.* 

Jesus returned across the lake from Gadara to resume his labors 
in Galilee. The circuit through its southern towns and villages od 
which he now embarked was the last he was to make. He looked on 
the multitudes that gathered round him with a singular compassion. 
Spiritually to his eye they were as sheep scattered abroad, who when 
he left them would be without a shepherd. " The harvest," said he 
to his disciples, " truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few. Pray 
ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers 
into his harvest." But was he not himself the Lord of the harvest, 
and had he no laborers to send forth ? 

Laborers sufficiently numerous, sufficiently trained, there were 
not ; but there were those twelve men whom he had chosen, who had 
for many months been continually by his side. He can send them ; 
not permanently, for as yet they were comparatively unqualified for 
the work. Besides, to separate them finally from himself would be 
to disqualify them for the office which they afterwards were to exer- 
cise, of being the reporters of his chief sayings, the witnesses of all 
the leading actions of his life. But he can send them on a brief, pre- 
liminary, experimental tour, one happy effect of which would be, that 
the townsmen and villagers of Galilee shall have one more opportu- 
nity afforded them of hearing the gospel of the kingdom announced. 
The hitherto close companionship of the twelve with Jesus may have 
presented to Jewish eyes nothing so extraordinary as to attract much 
notice and remark. Their great teachers had their favorite pupils, 
whom they kept continually beside them, and whose services of kind- 
ness to them they gratefully received and acknowledged. It was 
something new, indeed, to see a teacher acting as Jesus did— setting 
up no school in any one separate locality, confining himself to no one 
place and to no set times or methods; discoursing about the king- 
dom, week-day and Sabbath-day alike, publicly in the synagogue, 
privately at the supper-table, on road-side and lake-side, from the 
bow of the boat and the brow of the mountain. And always close to 
him these twelve men are seen who had forsaken their former occu- 
pations, and had now attached themselves permanently to his per- 
son, ministering to his comfort, imbibing his instructions, forming an 
innermost circle of discipleship, within which Jesus was often seen to 
'* Matt. 9 : 35-38 ; 10 ; Mark 6 : 7-30 ; Luke 9 : 1-9. 



THE MISSION OF THE TWELVE. 269 

retire, and to wliich the mysteries of the kingdom were revealed as 
there was ability to receive them. 

But now a still more singular spectacle is presented. Jesus takes 
the twelve, and dividing them into pairs, sends them away from him 
two and two ; delivering to them, as he sends them forth, the address 
contained in the tenth chapter of the gospel of St. Matthew. A few 
minute instructions were first given as to the special missionary tour 
on which they were despatched. It was to be confined strictly to 
Galilee — to the narrow district that they had already frequently trav- 
ersed in their Master's company. But he personally was not to be 
the burden of their message. They were not to announce his advent 
as the Messiah. He had not done so himself, and their preaching 
was not to go beyond his own. They were simply to proclaim the 
advent of the kingdom, leaving the works and words of Jesus to point 
out the place in that kingdom which he occupied. The power of 
working miracles they were for the time to enjoy, but they were not 
to use it, as they might easily have done, for any selfish or mercenary 
purpose. As freely as they got, they were to give. They were to be 
absent but a few days. They were going, not among strangers or 
enemies, but among friends and brethren. The more easily and expe- 
ditiously they got through their work the better. Unprovided and 
unencumbered, they were to cast themselves at once upon the hospi- 
tality of those they visited. "Nor was there in this," says Dr. Thom- 
son, " any departure from the simple manners of the country. At 
this day the farmer sets out on excursions quite as extensive without 
a para in his purse, and the modern Moslem prophet of Tarshiha 
thus sends forth his apostles over this identical region. Neither do 
they encumber themselves with two coats. They are accustomed to 
sleep in the garments they wear during the day ; and in this climate 
such plain people experience therefrom no inconvenience. They wear 
coarse shoes, answering to the sandal of the ancients, but never carry 
two pairs ; and, although the staff is the invariable companion of all 
wayfarers, they are content with owe."* The directions given to the 
apostles were proper to a short and hasty journey, such as the one 
now before them. On entering any town or village, their first inquiry 
was to be for the susceptible, the well-disposed, about whom, after 
the excitement consequent upon Christ's former visits, some informa- 
tion might easily be obtained. They were to salute the house in 
which such resided, to enter it, and if well-received, were to remain 
in it, not going from house to house, wasting their time in multiplied 

9 "The Land and the Book," p. 346. In St. Matthew's gospel it is said they 
were not to take staves : in Mark, that they were to take one, that is, one oni>. 



270 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

or prolonged formalities and salutations by the way. Wherever 
rejected, they were to shake off the dust of their feet against that 
house or city ; and to create a profound impression of the importance 
of the errand on which they were despatched, Jesus closes the first 
part of his address to them by saying, "Verily I say unto you, It 
shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah, in the 
day of judgment, than for that city." 

Hitherto, all that he had said had direct reference to the short 
and rapid journey that lay immediately before them. But limited as 
it was, the task now committed to them carried in it the germ, the 
type of that larger apostolic work for which, by the gift of the Spirit, 
they were to be qualified, and in which, for so many years after their 
Master's death, they were to be engaged. And so, after speaking of 
the one, Jesus passes on to the other, the nearer and narrower mis- 
sion sinking out of sight as his eye rests on the farther and broader 
mission that lay before them. In the one, the nearer, there was to 
be no opposition or persecution; in the other, a fiery trial was in 
store for the faithful. The one, the nearer, was to be confined to the 
lost sheep of the house of Israel; in the other, they were to come 
into collision with the kings and governors of the Gentiles. It is of 
this second period — of the persecution on the one hand, and the 
gifts of the qualifying Spirit on the other, by which it should be dis- 
tinguished — that Jesus speaks in the passage embraced in the verses 
from the sixteenth to the twenty-third. The second division of the 
address closes, as the first does, by a "Verily I say unto you." The 
fact thus solemnly affirmed pointing, in the destruction of Jerusalem, 
to the close of that period over which Christ's prophetic eye was now 
ranging : " Verity I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the 
cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come." 

But now the whole earthly mission of the twelve presents itself 
to the Saviour's eye but as the preface and prelude to that continu- 
ous, abiding work of witnessing for him upon this earth to which 
each separate disciple of the cross is called. Dropping, therefore, all 
directions and allusions referring exclusively to the apostles and to 
apostolic times, Jesus, in the closing and larger portion of the address, 
from the twenty-fourth to the forty-second verse, speaks generally of 
all true discipleship to himself upon this earth: foretelling its for- 
tunes, describing its character, its duties, its encouragements, and its 
rewards. 

Jesus would hold out no false hopes — would have no one become 
his upon any false expectations. Misconception, misrepresentation, 
ill-treatment of c ne kind or other, his time and faithful followers must 



THE MISSION OF THE TWELVE. 273 

be prepared to meet — to meet without surprise, without complaint, 
without resentment. The disciple need not hope to be above his 
Master, the servant above his Lord. " If they have called the mas- 
ter of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of his household?'* 
But why should the covert slander, the calumny whispered in secret, 
be dreaded, when the day was coming when all that is covered shall 
be revealed, all that is hid shall be made known ? With his disciples 
there shall be no concealment of any kind. He came to found no 
secret society, linked by hidden bonds, depository of inner mysteries. 
True, there were things that he addressed alone to the apostles' ear 
in private, but the secrecy and reserve so practised by him was meant 
to be temporary and transient. "What I tell you thus in darkness, 
that speak ye in the light : and what ye hear in the ear, that preach 
ye upon the housetops." ' The doing so may imperil life, the life of 
the body; but what of that? "Fear not them which kill the body, 
but are not able to kill the soul : but rather fear him which is able to 
destroy both soul and body in hell." But even the life of the body 
shall be watched over, not suffered needlessly to perish. Not a single 
sparrow, though worth but half a farthing, falls to the ground with- 
out God's knowledge, not a hair of your head but is numbered by 
him. "Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many spar- 
rows." The head whose very hairs are numbered by him, your Father 
will not see lightly or uselessly cut off. Leave your fate then in his 
hands, and whatever that may be, be open, be honest, be full, be 
fearless in the testimony ye bear, for "Whosoever shall confess me 
before men, him will I confess before my Father which is in heaven. 
But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I deny before my 
Father which is in heaven." Times of outward persecution may not 
last, but think not that on this earth there shall ever be perfect peace. 
" I came not to send peace, but a sword," a sword which, though it 
drop out of the open hand of the persecutor, shall not want other 
hands to take it up and wield it differently. " I am come to set a 
man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her 
mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a 
man's foes shall be they of his own household." And to no severer 
trial shall my followers be subject, than when it is not force but affec- 
tion, the affection of the nearest and dearest on earth, that would 
draw them away from me, or tempt them to be unfaithful io my 
cause. 

'But above all other claims is the one T make on the love of all 
who choose me as their Saviour and their Lord- I must be first in 
their affections : the throne of their heart must be mine ; no rival per- 



272 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

nritted to sit by my side. It is not that I am selfishly exactive ©I 
affection; it is not that I am jealous of other love; it is not that I 
wish or ask that you should love others less in older to loie me 
more ; but it is, that what I am to you, what I have done for you, 
what from this time forth and for evermore I am prepared to be 
to and to do for you, gives me such a priority and precedence in 
jhe claim I make, "that he that loveth father and mother more 
than me is not worthy of me, and he that loveth son or daughter 
more than me is not worthy of me." A bitter thing it may be to 
crucify some inordinate earthly desire of affection in order to give 
me, or to keep me in, that place of supremacy which is the only one 
I possibly or consistently can occupy. But he that taketh not up 
the cross for me, even as I have taken up the cross for him ; he 
that will not deny himself, and in the exercise of that self-denial 
take up his cross daily and follow me; "he is not worthy of me, he 
cannot be my disciple." For this is one of the fixed unalterable con- 
ditions of that spiritual economy under which you and all men live, 
that he who maketh the pursuits and the pleasures of the present 
oeene of things the aim of his being ; he who by any manner or form 
of self-gratification seeks to gain his life, shall lose it, shall fail at the 
last even in the very thing upon which he has set his heart. Where- 
as he who for my sake shall give himself to the mortifying of every 
evil affection of his nature, to the crucifying of the flesh with the 
affections and lusts thereof, he shall find the life he seems to 1 3se ; 
out of the death of the lower shall spring the higher, the eternal life 
of the spirit. And let all of every degree, whether they be apostles 
or prophets, or simple disciples, or the least of these my little 
ones, be animated, be elevated throughout that strife with self and 
sin, the world and the devil, to which in Christ they are called, by 
remembering what a dignified position they occupy, whose repre- 
sentatives they are. "He that receiveth you receiveth me; he that 
receiveth me receiveth him that sent me." And if it be in the name 
or the character of a prophet that any one receives you, he, the 
receiver, shall have a prophet's reward ; or if in the name simply of a 
righteous man that any one receive you, he, the receiver, shall have & 
righteous man's reward; nay, more, if it be to any of the least of my 
little ones that a cup only of cold water be given in the name of a 
disciple, he, the giver, shall in no wise lose his reward.' For so it is, 
and ever shall be, not simply by great meu going out upon great em- 
bassies and speaking words of power to gathered multitudes, or by 
great assemblies propounding or enforcing great and solemn truths, 
that the kingdom of Jesus Christ is advanced, but by all, the high 



THE MISSION OF THE SEVENTY. 273 

and low, and rich and poor, and weak and strong, who bear his name, 
looking upon themselves as his missionaries here on earth, sent by 
him even as he was sent by his Father ; sent, that they may be to one 
another what he has been to them, seeking each other's good, willing 
to communicate, giving and in giving receiving, receiving and in 
receiving imparting, each doing a little in one way or other to com- 
mend to others that Saviour in whom is all his trust, these littles 
making up that vast and ever multiplying agency by which the 
empire of the Eedeemer over human spirits is being continually en- 
larged. 

Can any one read over and even partially enter into the meaning 
of those words which Jesus spake to his apostles when sending them 
for the first time from his side — a season when there was so little 
material out of which any rational conjecture could be formed as to 
his future or theirs, or the future of any school or sect, or institution 
that He and they might found — and not be convinced that open as day 
lay all that future to him who here, as elsewhere in so many of his 
most important discourses, sets forth in a series of perspectives — mix- 
ing with and melting into each other — the whole history of* his church 
in all its trials and conflicts from the beginning even to the end? But 
a greater than a prophet is here — one who speaks of men being 
hated, persecuted, scourged, and put to death for his name's sake, as 
if there were nothing in any wise unreasonable or unnatural in it; 
one who would have all men come to him, and who asks of all who 
come, love, obedience, and sacrifice, such as but one Being has a 
right to ask, even he who has redeemed us to God by his blood, 
whose right over all we are and have and can do is supreme, unchal- 
lengeable, unchangeable ; whose, by every tie, we are, and whom ; by 
the mightiest of obligations, we are bound to love and serve. 

The sight must have been a very extraordinary one, of the apos- 
tles setting off two by two from their Master's side, passing with such 
eagerness and haste through the towns and villages, preaching and 
working miracles. To hear one man preach as Jesus did, to see one 
man confirm his w T ord by doing such wonderful works, filled the whole 
community with wonder. To what a higher pitch must that wonder 
have been raised when they saw others commissioned by him, endowed 
by him, not only preaching as he did, but healing, too, all manner of 
disease! True, the circle was a small one to whom such special pow- 
ers were delegated ; but half a year or so afterwards, as if to to teach 
that ii was not to the twelve alone — to those holding the high office 
of the apostolate — that Jesus was prepared to grant such a commis- 
sion, he sent out a band of seventy men, embracing, we are inclined 

Llf a of Chriit. 18 



274 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

to believe, almost the entire body of his professed disciples in the 
north who were of the age and had the strength to execute such a 
task ; addressing them in almost the same terms, imposing on them 
the same duties, and clothing them with the same prerogatives, 
clearly manifesting by his employment of so large a number of his 
ordinary disciples that it was not his purpose that the dissemination 
of the knowledge of his name should be confined to any one small 
and peculiarly endowed body of men. 

It appears from the statement of St. Matthew that when Jesus 
" had made an end of commanding his twelve disciples, he departed 
thence to teach and to preach in their cities," continuing thus his 
own personal labors in the absence of the twelve. How long they 
remained apart, in the absence of all definite notes of time, can only 
be a matter of conjecture. A few days would carry the apostles over 
all the ground they had to traverse, and they would not loiter by the 
way. Ere very long they were all united once more at Capernaum. 
Tidings met them there of a very sad event which had just occurred, 
we know not exactly where, but if Josephus is to be trusted, it was 
in the remotest region of that district over which Herod Antipas 
ruled. It is very singular that though Herod governed Galilee, and 
built and generally resided at Tiberias, a town upon the lake-side a 
few miles south of the plain of Gennesaret, he had never met with 
Jesus ; had done nothing to interrupt his labors, though these weie 
making so great a sensation all over the country ; had never, appa- 
rently, till about this time, even heard of him or of his works. It 
has not unreasonably been conjectured that soon after throwing John 
the Baptist into prison, he had been absent on one of his journeys to 
Rome during those very months in which our Lord's Galilean minis- 
try was most openly and actively conducted. Even, however, had 
this not been the case — as we never read of Jesus visiting Tiberias — 
we can readily enough imagine that Herod might have been living 
there all the time, too much engaged with other things to heed much 
what, if at all spoken of in his presence, would be spoken of con- 
temptuously as a new Jewish religious ferment that was spreading 
among the people. The public tranquillity was not threatened; and, 
that preserved, they might have as many such religious excitements 
among them as they liked. Though fully cognizant of the nature 
and progress of the Baptist's ministry, he had done nothing to stop 
it. It was not on any public or political grounds, but purely acd 
soiely on a personal one, that he had cast John into prison. At first 
lie had listened to him gladly, and done many things at his bidding, 
but the Baptist had been bold enough to tell him that it was not 






MARTYRDOM OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. 275 

lawful for him to have his brother's wife, and brave enough at all 
hazards to stand by what he said. He wo aid neither modify nor 
retract. Herod's anger was kindled against him, and was well nursed 
und kept warm by Herodias. She would have made short work with 
the impudent intermeddler. But Herod feared the people, and so 
contented himself with casting him into that prison in which he lay 
so many long and weary months. While lying there alone and inac- 
tive, he had sent, as we have seen, two of his disciples to Jesus to 
ask him, "Art thou he that should come, or look we foi another?" 
It was after all but an indirect and ambiguous reply that they had 
brought back— enough, and more than enough, to meet any transient 
doubt as to Christ's character and office which in any quarter might 
have arisen, but carrying with it no reference to the Baptist's per- 
sonal state — embodying no message of sympathy, holding out no 
prospect of relief. All that was left to John was to cling to the hope 
that his long imprisonment must be near its end. Herod might 
relent, or Jesus might interpose ; somehow or other the deliverance 
would come. And it did come at last, but not as John had looked 
for it. It came in the form of that grim executioner, who, breaking 
in upon his solitude, and flashing before his eyes the instrument of 
death, bade him bow his head at, once to the fatal stroke. Short 
warning this: was no explanation to be given? no interview with 
Herod allowed ? not a day nor an hour for preparation given ? No. 
The king's order was for instant execution. The damsel was waiting 
for the head, and the mother waiting for the damsel. How did the 
Baptist bear himself at that trying moment? There were no crowds 
to witness this martyr's death ; not one there to tell us afterwards 
how he looked, or what he said. Alone, he had to gird his spirit up 
to meet his doom. A moment or two, spent we know not how, and 
the death-blow fell. 

It is said that when death comes suddenly upon a man — when, 
this moment in full possession of his faculties, he knows that next 
moment is to be his last — within that moment there flashes often 
upon the memory the whole scenery of a bygone life. If such a 
vision of the past rose up before the Baptist's eye, what a strange, 
mysterious thing might that life of his on earth have seemed — how 
likfe a failure, how seemingly abortive ! Thirty long years of prepa- 
ra tion ; then a brief and wonderful success, brimful of promise ; that 
success suddenly arrested ; all means and opportunities of active ser- 
vice plucked out of his hand. Then the idle months in prison, and 
then the felon's death ! Mysterious, inexplicable as such a life might 
look to the eye of sense, how looked it to the eye of God? Manj 



276 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

flattering things have been said of men when they were living; many 
false and fulsome epitaphs have been graven on their tombs ; but the 
lips that never flattered have said of John, that of those that have 
been born of women there hath not arisen a greater ; his greatness 
mainly due to his peculiar connection with Christ, but not unsup- 
ported by his personal character, for he is one of the few prominent 
figures in the sacred page upon which not a single stain is seen to 
rest. And though they buried him in some obscure grave to which 
none went on pilgrimage, yet for that tomb the pen that never traced 
a line of falsehood has written the brief but pregnant epitaph : "John 
fulfilled his course." Terminating so abruptly at such an early stage, 
with large capacity for work, and plenty of work to do, shall we not 
say of this man that his life was unseasonably and prematurely cut 
off? No ; his earthly task was done : he had a certain work assigned 
him here, and it was finished. Nor could a higher eulogium have 
been pronounced over his grave than this, that he had fulfilled the 
course assigned to him by Providence. Let the testimony thus borne 
to him convince us that there is a special and narrow sphere which 
God has marked out for each of us on earth. To be wise to know 
what that sphere is, to accept it and keep to it, and be content with 
it — diligently, perseveringly, thankfully, submissively to do its work 
and bear its burdens, is one of our first duties, a duty which in its 
discharge will minister one of our simplest and purest joys. 

The bloody head was grasped by the executioner and carried into 
the king's presence, and given to the damsel ; and she carried it to 
her mother. The sense of sated vengeance may for the moment have 
filled the heart of Herodias with a grim and devilish joy ; but those 
pale lips, those fixed and glazed eyes, that livid countenance upon 
whose rigid features the shadow of its living sternness is still resting, 
she cannot look long at them ; she waves the ghastly object from her 
sight, to be borne away, and laid we know not where. 

The headless body had been left upon the prison floor. So soon 
as they hear of what has happened, some of John's disciples come 
and lift it up and bear it out sadly to burial ; and that last office 
done, in their desolation and helplessness they followed the instinct 
of that new faith which their Master's teaching had inspired, they 
went and told Jesus. They did what in all our sorrows we should 
do : they went and told him who can most fully sympathize, and who 
alone can thoroughly and abidingly comfort and sustain. 



THE FEEDING OF THE FIVE THOUSAND. 277 



X. 

The Feeding of the Five Thousand, and the 
Walking upon the Water.* 

Herod first heard of Jesus immediately after the Baptist's death. 
While some said that this Jesus now so much spoken of was Elias, 
or one of the prophets, there were others about the Tetrarch who 
suggested that he was John risen from the dead. Herod had little 
real faith, but that did not prevent his lying open enough to super- 
stitious fancies. He was ill at ease about what he had done on his 
birthday feast — haunted by fears that he could not shake off. The 
suggestion about Jesus fell in with these fears, and helped in a way 
to soothe them. And so, after some perplexity and doubt, at last he 
adopted it, and proclaimed it to be his own conviction, saying to his 
servants, as if with a somewhat lightened conscience, " This is John, 
whom I beheaded : he is risen from the dead : and therefore mighty 
works do show forth themselves in him." John had done no mighty 
works so long as Herod knew him, but now, in this new estate, he 
had risen to a higher level, to which he, Herod, had helped to ele- 
vate him — he would like to see him in the new garb. 

The disciples of John, who came and told Jesus of their master's 
death, had to tell him, also, of the strange credulity and curiosity of 
Herod. We are left to imagine the impression their report created. 
It came at the very time when the twelve had returned from their 
short and separate excursions, and when, as the fruit of the divided 
and multiplied agency that had been exerted, so many were coming 
and going out and in among the reassembled band, that •■ they had 
no leisure," we are told, " so much as to eat." Mark 6 : 21. For 
himself and for them, Jesns desired now a little quiet and seclusion. 
For himself — that he might ponder over a death prophetic of his own, 
the occurrence of which made, as we shall see, an epoch in his minis- 
try. For them — that they might have some respite from accumulated 
fatigue and toil. His own purpose fixed, he invited them to join him 
in its execution, saying to them, " Come ye yourselves into a desert 
place and rest a while." Such a desert place as would afford the 
seclusion that they sought, they had not to go far to find. Over 
Against Capernaum, across the lake, in the district running up north- 
ward to Bethsaida, are plenty of lonely enough places to choose 
among. They take boat to row across. The wind blows fresh 
* Matt U : 12-33 ; Mark 6 : 30-52 ; Luke 9 : 10-17 ; John 6 : 1-21. 



278 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

from the northwest ; for shelter, they hug the shore. Their departure 
had been watched by the crowd, and now, when they see how close to 
the land they keep, and how slow the progress is they make, a great 
multitude out of all the cities — embracing, in all likelihood, many of 
those companies which had gathered to go up to the Passover — mn 
on foot along the shore. A less than two hours' walk brings them to 
Bethsaida, at the northern extremity of the lake. There they cross 
the Jordan, and enter upon that large and -uninhabited plain that 
slopes down to the lake on its northeastern shores. Another hour or 
so carries them to the spot at which Christ and his apostles land, 
where many, having outstripped the boat, are ready to receive 
them, and where more and more still come, bearing their sick along 
with them. It was somewhat of a trial to have the purpose of the 
voyage apparently thus baffled, the seclusion sought after thus vio- 
lated ; but if felt at all, it sat light upon a heart which, turning away 
from the thought of self, was filled with compassion for those who 
were " as sheep not having a shepherd." Retiring to a neighboring 
mountain, Jesus sits down and teaches, and heals ; and so the hours 
of the afternoon pass by. 

But now another kind of solicitude seizes on the disciples. They 
may not have been as patient of the defeat of their Master's purpose 
as he was himself. They may have grudged to see the hours that he 
had destined to repose broken in upon and so fully occupied. True, 
they had little to do themselves but listen, and wait, and watch. The 
crowd grew, however; stream followed stream, and poured itself out 
upon the mountain-side. The day declined ; the evening shadows 
lengthened ; yet, as if never satisfied, that vast company still clung to 
Jesus, and made no movement to depart. The disciples grew anx- 
ious. They came at last to Jesus, and said, " This is a desert place, 
and the time is now past : send the multitude away, that they may go 
into the country round about, and into the villages, and lodge, and 
buy bread for themselves, for they have nothing to eat." "They 
need not depart," said Jesus, " give you to them to eat." Turning 
to Philip, a native of Bethsaida, one well acquainted with the adjoin- 
ing district, Jesus saith in an inquiring tone, " "Whence shall we buy 
bread, that these may eat?" Philip runs his eye over the great 
assemblage, and making a rough estimate of what would be required, 
he answered, " Two hundred pennyworth of bread would not be suffi- 
cient for them, that every one might ' get a little ;' shall we go and 
buy as much?" Jesus asked how much food they had among them- 
selves, without needing to go and make any further purchase. An- 
drew, another native of Bethsaida, who had been scrutinizing the 



THE FEEDING OF THE FIVE THOUSAND. 279 

crowd, discovering some old acquaintances, said, " There is a lad 
here, who has five barley loaves and two small fishes ; but what are 
they among so many?" "Bring them to me," said Jesus. They 
brought them. " Make the men," he said, " sit down by fifties in a 
company " — an order indicative of our Lord's design that there might 
be no confusion and that the attention of all might be directed to what 
he was about to do. The season was favorable — it was the full 
spring-tide of the year ; the place was convenient — much green grass 
covering the broad and gentle slope that stretched away from the 
base of the mountain. The marshalling of five thousand men, besides 
women and children, into such an orderly array, must have taken 
some time. The people, however, quietly consented to be so arranged, 
and company after company sat down, till the whole were seated in 
the presence of the Lord, who all the while has stood in silence 
watching the operation, with that scanty stock of provisions in his 
hand. All eyes are now upon him. He begins to speak ; he prays ; 
he blesses the five loaves and the two fishes, breaks them, divides 
them among the twelve, and directs them to go and distribute them 
among the others. 

And now, among those thousands — sitting there and ranged so 
that all can see what is going on — the mystery of their feeding begins 
to show itself. There were one hundred companies of fifty, besides 
the women and children. In each apostle's hand, as he takes his 
portion from the hand of Jesus, there is not more than would reach 
one man's need. Yet, as the distribution by the twelve begins, there 
is enough to give what looks like a sufficient portion to each of the 
hundred men, who sits at the head of his company. He gets it, and, 
little enough as it seems for himself, he is told to divide it, and give 
the half of it to his neighbor, to be dealt with in like fashion. Each 
man in the ranks, as he begins to break, finds that the half that he 
got at first grows into a whole in the very act of dividing and bestow- 
ing; the small initial supply grows and multiplies in the transmission 
from hand to hand. All eat — all are satisfied. "Gather up," said 
Jesus, as he saw some unused food lying scattered upon the ground, 
" the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost." They do ; and 
while one basket could hold the five loaves and the two fishes, it now 
takes twelve to hold these fragments. 

Of the nature and purpose of this great miracle, we shall have 
something to say hereafter. Meanwhile, let us notice its immediate 
olfect. One of its singularities, as compared with other miracles of 
our Lord, was this : that such a vast multitude were all at once not 
only spectators of it, but participators of its benefits. Seven or eight 



280 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

thousand hungry men, women and children sit down upon a hillside, 
and there before their eyes, for an hour or two — full leisure given 
them to contemplate and reflect — the spectacle goes on, of a few 
loaves and fishes, under Christ's blessing, and by some mysterious 
acting of his great power, expanding in their hands till they are all 
more than satisfied. Each sees the wonder, and shares in the result. 
It is not like a miracle, however great, wrought instantly upon a single 
man. Such a miracle the same number of men, women, and children 
might see, indeed, but could not all see as each saw this. The im- 
pression here of a very marvellous exhibition of the divine power, so 
near akin to that of creative energy, was one so broadly, so evenly, so 
slowly, and so deeply made, that it looks to us just what we might have 
expected when the thousands rise from their seats, when all is over, 
and say one to another, what they had never got the length of say- 
ing previously, "This is of a truth that Prophet that should come 
into the world." No longer any doubt or vagueness in their faith — 
no longer a question with them which prophet or what kind of 
prophet he was. He is none other than their Messiah, their Prince ! 
He who can do that which they have just seen him do, what could be 
beyond his power? He may not himself be willing to come forward, 
assert his right, exert his power — but they will do it for him — they 
will do it now ; they will take him at once, and force him to be their 
king. Jesus sees the incipient action of that leaven which, if allowed 
to work, would lead on to some act of violence. He sees that the 
leaven of earthliness and mere JeAvish pride and ambition has enter- 
ed even among the twelve, who, as they see and hear what is going 
on, appear not unwilling to take part with the multitude. It is time 
for him to interfere and prevent any such catastrophe. He calls the 
twelve to him, and directs them to embark immediately, to go alone 
and leave him there, to row back to Capernaum, where, in the course 
of the night or the next morning, he might join them. A strange 
and unwelcome proposal — for why should they be parted, and where 
was their Master to go, or what was he to do, in the long hours of 
that lowering night that was coming down in darkness and storm 
upon the hills and lake ? They remonstrate ; but with a peremptori- 
ness and decision, the very rarity of which gave it all the greater power, 
he overrules their remonstrances, and constrains them to get into the 
boat and leave him behind. Turning to the multitude, whose plot 
about taking and making him a king, taken up by his twelve chief 
followers, this transaction had interrupted, he dismisses them in such 
a way, with such words of power, that they at once disperse. 

And now he is alone. Alone he goes up into a mountain- -alone 



THE WALKING UPON THE WATER. 281 

he prays there. The darkness deepens ; the tempest rises ; midnight 
comes with its gusts and gloom. There — somewhere on that moun- 
tain, sheltered or exposed — there, for five or six hours, till the fourth 
watch of the night, till after dawn — Jesus holds his secret and close 
fellowship with heaven. Into the privacies of those secluded hours 
of his devotion we presume not to intrude. But if, as we shall pres- 
ently see was actually the case, this threatened outbreak of a blinded 
popular impulse in his favor — the attempt thus made, and for the 
moment thwarted, to take him by force and make him a king — created 
a marked crisis in the history of our Lord's dealings with the multi- 
tude, as well as of their disposition and conduct towards him — this 
night of lonely prayer is to be put alongside of the other instances 
in which, upon important emergencies, our Saviour had recourse 
to privacy and prayer, teaching us, by his great example, where 
our refuge and our strength in all like circumstances are to be 
found. 

Meanwhile it has fared ill with the disciples on the lake. Two or 
three hours' hearty labor at the oar might have carried them over to 
Capernaum. But the adverse tempest is too strong for them. The 
whole night long they toil among the waves, against the wind. The 
day had dawned, a dim light from the east is spreading over the 
water; they had rowed about five and-twenty or thirty furlongs— 
were rather more than halfway across the lake — when, treading on 
the troubled waves, as on a level, solid pavement, a figure is seen 
approaching, drawing nearer and nearer to the boat. Their toil is 
changed to terror — the vigorous hand relaxes its grasp — the oars 
stand still in the air or are but feebly plied — the boat rocks heavily — 
a cry of terror comes from the frightened crew — they think it is a 
spirit. He made as though he would have passed them by — they cry 
out the more. For though so like their Master as they now see the 
form to be, yet if he go past them in silence, it cannot be other than 
his ghost. But now he turns, and, dispelling at once all doubt and 
fear, he says, "Be of good cheer; it is I, be not afraid." He is but 
a few yards from the boat, when, leaping at once— as was no strange 
thing with him — from one extremity to the other, Peter says, "Lord, 
if it be thou " — or rather, for we cannot think that he had any doubt 
as to Christ's identity — " Since it is thou, let me come unto thee on 
the water." Why not wait till Jesus comes into the boat? Because 
lie is so pleased, so proud to see his Master tread with such victorious 
footstep the restless devouring deep ; because he wants to share the 
triumph of the deed — to walk side by side, before his brothers, with 
Jesus, though it be but a step or two. 



282 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

He gets the permission — he makes the attempt — -is at first sue 
cessful. So long as he keeps his eye on Jesus — so long as that faith 
which prompted the proposal, that sense of dependence in which the 
first step out of the boat and down upon the deep was taken, remain 
unshaken — all goes well. But he has scarce moved off from the boat 
when he looks away from Christ, and out oyer the tempestuous sea. 
The wind is not more boisterous, the waves are not higher or rougher 
than they were the moment before, but he was not thinking of them 
then. He was looking at, he was thinking of, he was hanging upon his 
Master then. Now he looks at, thinks only of wind and wave. His 
faith begins to fail ; fearing, he begins to sink ; sinking, he fixes his 
eye afresh and most earnestly on Jesus. The eye affecting the heart, 
rekindling faith in the very bosom of despair, he cries out, "Lord, 
save me!" It was the cry of weakness, of wild alarm, yet it had in 
it one grain of gold. It was a cry to Jesus as to the only one that 
now could help ; some true faith mingling now with all the fear. 

The help so sought for came at once. " Immediately Jesus stretch- 
ed forth his hand and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little 
faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?" At the grasp of that helping 
hand, at the rebuke of that chiding voice, let us believe that faith 
came back into Peter's breast, and that not borne up or dragged 
through the waters, but walking by his Master's side, he made his 
way back to the little vessel where his comrades were, to take his 
place among them a wiser and a humbler man. As soon as Jesus 
and he had entered the vessel, we are told that the wind not only 
ceased, but that " immediately the ship was at the land whither they 
went." Of those who were in the ship that night some were exceed- 
ingly but stupidly amazed, then- hearts hardened, untouched by the 
multiplied miracles (Mark 6:51, 52) of the last twelve hours; others 
came and worshipped Jesus, saying, " Of a truth thou art the Son of 
God;" one of the first instances in which this great title, of which we 
shall have so much to say hereafter, was applied to him. 

We may divide the miracles of our Saviour into two classes: 
1. Those wrought in or upon nature. 2. Those wrought in or upon 
man. Of the thirty-three miracles of which some detailed account ifl 
given us in the gospels, nine belong to the former and twenty-four to 
the latter class. But this gives no true idea of the mere numerical 
ratio of the one kind of miracles to the other. It is but a very few of 
the many thousand cases of healing on the part of Jesus of which 
any record has been preserved ; while it seems probable that all the 
instances have been recounted in which there was any intervention 
with the laws or processes of the material universe. It is remarka- 



THE WALKING UPON THE WATER. 283 

ble at least that of tlie small number of this class a repetition of the 
same miracle is twice recorded — -that of the multiplying of bread and 
of an extraordinary draught of fishes. Looking broadly at these two 
classes of miracles, it might appear like a discriminating difference 
oetween them that the one, the miracles on nature, were more works 
of power, the miracles on man more works of love. And admitting 
for the moment the existence of some ground for this distinction, it 
pleases us to think what a vast preponderance Christ's works of 
love had over his works of power. But it is only to a very limited 
extent that we are disposed to admit the truth of this distinction. 
We know of no miracle of our Lord that was a mere miracle of power, 
a mere display of his omnipotence, a mere sign wrought to prove that 
he was almighty. Every miracle of our Saviour carried with it a les- 
son of wisdom, gave an exhibition of his character, was a type of 
some lower sphere of his working as the Redeemer of our souls. In 
a far more intimate sense than any of them was an outward proof of 
his divine authority; they were all instances or illustrations in more 
shadowy or more substantial form of the remedial dispensations of 
his mercy and grace in and upon the sinful children of men, wrought 
by him and recorded now for us, far more to teach us what, as our Sav- 
iour, he is — what he has already done, and what he is prepared to 
do for us spiritually — than to put into our hands evidence of the 
divinity of his mission. 

Let us take the two miracles that we have now before us, both of 
which belong to the first and smaller class, the miracles on nature. 
Had it been the purpose of our Lord to make a mere display of his 
omnipotence in the feeding of five thousand men, one can readily 
imagine of its being done in a far more visible and striking style than 
the one chosen. He could have had the men, women, and children 
go and gather up the stones of the desert or of the lake-side; and as 
they did so, could have turned each stone into bread. Or he could 
have brought forth the five loaves, and in the presence of all the peo- 
ple have multiplied them into five thousand by a w T ave of his hand- 
by a word of his power. He chose rather, here as elsewhere — might 
we not say as everywhere? — to veil the workings of his omnipotence — 
to hide, as it were, the working of his hand and power, mingling it 
with that of human hands and common earthly elements. How 
much more it was our Lord's design to convey a lesson of instructioL 
than to give a display of his almightiness we shall better be able to 
judge when we have before us his own discourse illustrative of this 
very miracle, delivered on the following day. We shall then see how 
apt and singular and recondite a symbolism of what he spiritually is 



284 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

to all true believers lay wrapped up in his blessing and breaking and 
dividing the bread. 

But further still, was not the agency of all his ministering ser- 
vants, of all his true disciples, most truly, vividly, picturesquely rep- 
resented in what happened upon that mountain-side ? " Give ye them 
to eat!" such were Christ's words to his apostles, as he handed to 
each of them his portion of the five loaves and the two fishes. 'Take 
and break and give to one another;' such were the apostles' words 
to the multitude. And as each took and broke, the half that he kept 
for himself grew within the hand that broke it, as did in turn the 
other half he handed to his neighbor. Such was the rule and method 
of the distribution and multiplication of the bread given to the thou- 
sands on the desert place of Bethsaida. Such is the rule and method 
of the distribution and multiplication of the bread of life. 

Let us gladly and gratefully accept the lesson that the miracle 
conveys. Let us believe, and act upon the belief, that the readier we 
are to distribute of that bread to others, the fuller and the richer shall 
be our own supply — that we do not lose but gain by giving here — 
that there is that scattereth here and yet increaseth. From hand to 
hand let the life-giving bread be passed, till all the hungry and the 
perishing get their portion — till all eat and are satisfied. 

Or look again at the other miracle, that of walking upon the 
water. It was indeed a miracle of power, but one also of pity too, 
and love. He came in the morning watch, far more to relieve from 
toil and protect from danger his wornout and exposed disciples than, 
merely to show that the sovereignty over nature was in his hands. 
Nor did he let that coming pass without an incident pregnant with 
spiritual instruction to us also ; for is there not much in each of us of 
Peter's weakness ? We may not have his first courage or faith — for 
there was much of both in the stepping out of the boat ; or we may 
not share in his impetuousness and over-confidence ; and so we may 
not throw ourselves among the waves and winds. But often, never- 
theless, they are around us ; and too apt are we, when so it happens 
with us, to look at them — to think of our difficulties and our trials 
and our temptations, till, Christ forgotten and out of sight, we begin 
to sink, happy only if in our sinking we turn to him, and his hand be 
stretched out to save us. In his extremity, it was not Peter's laying 
hold of Christ, it was Christ's laying hold of him that bore him up. 
And in our extremity it is not our hold of Jesus, but his of us, on 
which our trust resteth. Our hand is weak, but his is strong; ours 
so readily relaxes — too often lets go its hold ; but his — none can pluck 
out of it, and none that are in it can perish. 




'As Many as Touched Were Made Whole." 



THE DISCOURSE IN THE SYNAGOGUE. 285 

XI. 

The Discourse in the Synagogue of Capernaum.* 

When, after a single day's absence on the other side of the lake 
Jesus and his disciples returned to the land of Gennesaret, so soon as 
they were come out of the ship, "straightway," we are told, "they 
knew him, and ran through that whole region round about, and sent 
out into all that country, and brought to him all that were diseased, 
and began to carry about in beds those that were sick; and whither- 
soever he entered, into villages, or cities, or country, they laid the 
sick in the streets, and besought him that they might touch if it were 
but the border of his garment : and as many as touched him were 
made whole." Matt. 14 : 35 ; Mark 6 : 54-56. 

Never before had there appeared to be so great and so lively an 
interest in his teaching, or so large a measure of faith in his healing 
power. But behind this show of things Jesus saw that there was lit- 
tle or no readiness to receive him in his highest character and office. 
Some were prepared to acknowledge him as Elias, or one of the 
prophets ; some, like Herod, to hail him as the Baptist risen from the 
dead ; others, Hke the multitude on the lakeside, to take him by force 
and make him a king; but the notions of all alike concerning him 
and his mission were narrow, natural, earthly, selfish, unspiritual. It 
is at this very culminating point of his wonderful apparent popular- 
ity, that Jesus begins to speak and act as if the hope were\ gone of 
other and higher notions of himself and of the kingdom of Go(d being 
entertained by the nation at large. Hitherto he had spoken\niuch 
about that kingdom, and but little about himself; leaving his place 
therein to be inferred from what he said and did. He had spoken 
much about the dispositions that were to be cultivated, the duties 
that were to be done, the trials that were to be borne, the blessedness 
that was to be enjoyed by those admitted into the kingdom — of which 
earlier teaching St. Matthew had preserved a full and perfect speci- 
men in the Sermon on the Mount ; but he had said little or nothing 
of the one living central spring of light and life and holiness and joy 
within that kingdom, giving to it its being, character, and strength. 
In plainer or in clearer guise he had proclaimed to the multitude 
those outer things of the kingdom whose setting forth should have 
allured them into it; but its inner things had either been kept back 
from sight, or presented in forms draped around with a thick mantle 

« Jolm C : 22-71. 



286 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

of obscurity. He had never once hinted at his own approaching 
death as needful to its establishment — as laying, in fact, the founda- 
tion upon which it was to rest; nor had he spoken of the singular 
ties by which all its subjects were to be united personally to him, and 
to which their entrance and standing and privileges within the king- 
dom were to be wholly due. Now, however, for the first time in pub- 
lic, he alludes to his death, in such a way indeed as few if any of his 
hearers could then understand, yet one that assigned to it its true 
place in the economy of our redemption. Now for the first time in 
public he speaks openly and most emphatically of what he is and 
must be to all who are saved ; proclaiming a supreme attachment to 
himself, an entire and exclusive dependence on himself, a vital incor- 
porating union with himself, to be the primary and essential charac- 
teristic of all true subjects of that kingdom which he came down 
from heaven to set up on earth. From this time he gives up appa- 
rently the project of gaining new adherents; withdraws from the 
crowds, forsakes the more populous districts of Galilee, devotes him- 
self to his disciples, retires with them to remote parts of the country, 
discourses with them about his approaching decease, unfolding as he 
had not done before, both publicly and privately, the profounder 
mysteries of his person and of his work. 

To the discourse recorded by St. John in the sixth chapter of his 
gospel, the special interest attaches that it marks this transition point 
in the teachings and actings of our Lord. The great body of those 
miraculously fed upon the five loaves and the two fishes dispersed at 
the command of Christ, and sought their homes or new camping 
grounds. A number, however, still fingered near the sj)ot where the 
miracle had been performed. They had seen the apostles go off with- 
out Jesus. They had noticed that the boat they sailed in was the 
only one that had left the shore. They expected to meet Christ again 
next morning ; but, though they sought for him everywhere around, 
they could not find him. He must have taken some means to follow 
and rejoin his disciples, though what these were they cannot fancy. 
In the course of the forenoon some boats come over from Tiberias, 
of which they take advantage to recross the lake. After searching 
for him in the land of Gennesaret they find him at last in the syna- 
gogue of Capernaum. The edge of their wonder still fresh, they say 
to him, "Rabbi, when earnest thou hither?" — a mere idle question o* 
curiosity, to which he gives no answer. A far weightier question fo 
thorn than any as to the time or the manner in which Jesus had got 
here was, why were they so eagerly following him ? This question he 
will help them to answer. "Verily, verily," is our Lord's reply, "ye 



THE DISCOURSE IN THE SYNAGOGUE. l 287 

seek roe, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of 
the loaves and were filled." The miracle of the preceding evening 
had introduced a new element of attractive power. The multitudes 
who had previously followed Jesus to get their sick healed and to set 
the wonders that he did, were now tempted to follow him, in the 
hope of having that miracle repeated — their hunger again relieved 
Sad in heart as he contrasted their eagerness in this direction with 
their apathy in another, Jesus said to them, "Labor not for the meat 
which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting 
life, which the Son of man shall give you ; for him hath God the 
Father sealed." A dim yet somewhat true idea of what Christ means 
dawns upon the minds of his hearers. Accepting his rebuke, perceiv- 
ing that he points to something required of them in order to promote 
their higher and eternal interests; knowing no other way in which 
this could be done than by rendering some service to God, but alto- 
gether failing to notice the allusion to the Son of man and what they 
were to get from him, " What shall we do," they say, "that we may 
work the works of God?" 'tell us what these works are with which 
God will be most pleased, by the doing of which we may attain the 
everlasting life.' " This," said Jesus, " is the work of God, that ye 
believe on him whom he hath sent." 'It is not by many works, nor 
indeed, strictly speaking, by any thing looked at as mere work, that 
you are to gain that end. There is one thing here which, primarily 
and above all others, you are called to do : to believe on him whom 
the Father hath sent unto you ; to believe on me : not simply to 
credit what I say, but to put your supreme, undivided trust in me as 
the procurer and dispenser of that kind of food by which alone your 
souls can be nourished up into the life everlasting.' It was a large 
and very peculiar demand on Christ's part, to put believing on himself 
before and above all other things required. Struck with its singular- 
ity, they say unto him, "What sign showest thou that we may see 
and believe thee? what dost thou work?" 'If thou art really what 
thou apparently claimest to be — greater than all that have gone be- 
fore thee, greater even than Moses — show us some sign ; not one like 
those already shown, which, wonderful as they have been, have been 
but signs on earth; show us one from heaven like that of Moses, 
"when our fathers did eat manna in the desert, as it is written, He 
gave them bread from heaven to eat." ' ' You ask me' — such in envoi 
is our Lord's reply — 'to prove my superiority to Moses by doing 
something greater than he ever did; you point to that supply of the 
manna as one of the greatest of his miracles. But in doing so you 
make a twofold mistake. It was not Moses that gave that bread 



2S8 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

from heaven. It came from a higher than he — from him who is my 
Father, and who giveth still the true bread from heaven; not such 
bread as the manna, which was distilled like the dew in the lower 
atmosphere of the earth, which did not give life, but only sustained 
it, and that only for a limited time and a limited number. The true 
< bread of God is that* which conieth down from heaven, and giveth 
life unto the world." ' 

Hitherto, Jesus had been speaking of a food or bread which he 
and his Father were ready to impart; describing it as superior to 
the manna, inasmuch as it came from a higher region and discharged 
a higher office, supplying the wants, not of a nation, but of the 
world ; yet still speaking of it as if it were a separate outward thing. 
Imagining that it was something external, that eye could see, or hand 
could handle, or mouth could taste, to which such wonderful quali- 
ties belonged, with a greater earnestness and reverence than they 
had yet shown, his hearers say to him, "Evermore give us this 
bread." The time has come to drop that form of speech which Jesus 
hitherto has used; to cease speaking abstractedly or figuratively 
about a food or bread, to tell them plainly and directly, so that there 
could be no longer any misunderstanding, who and what the meat 
was which endure th unto everlasting life. "Then said he unto them, 
I am the bread of life : he that cometh to me shall never hunger, and 
he that believeth on me shall never thirst." 'I am not simply the 
procurer or the dispenser of this bread, I am more — I am the bread. 
If you would have it, you must not only come to me for it, but take 
me as it. And if you do so — if you come to me and believe on me — 
you shall find in me that which will fully and abidingly meet and sat- 
isfy all the inward wants and cravings of your spiritual nature, all 
the hunger and the thirst of the soul. Bring these to me, and it 
shall not be as when you try to quench or satisfy them elsewhere 
with earthly things, the appetite growing even the more urgent while 
the things it feeds on become ever less capable of gratifying. Bring 
the hunger and the thirst of your soul to me, and they shall be filled. 
But ye will not do so, ye have not done so. "Ye have seen me, and 
believe not." It may look thus as if my mission had failed, as if 
few or none would come to me that they might have life ; but this is 
my comfort in the midst of all the present and prevailing unbelief, 
that, "all that the Father giveth me shall come to me," their coming 
\o me is as sirre as their donation to me by the Father. But as sure 
also as is his fixed purpose is this fixed fact, "him that cometh to me 
I will in no wise cast out;" for I came down from heaven en nc 
* Not "he," as in our translation. 



THE DISCOURSE IN THE SYNAGOGUE. 289 

separate or random errand of my own, to throw myself with unfixed 
purposes amid unforeseen events to mould them to unknown or uncer- 
tain issues. I came "not to do mine own will, but the will of him 
that sent me;" and that will of his I carry out in rejecting none that 
come to me, in throwing my arms wide open to welcome every one 
who feels himself dying of a hunger of the heart that he cannot get 
satisfied, in taking him and caring for him, and providing for him, 
not letting him perish — no part of him perish, not even that which is 
naturally perishable; but taking it also into my charge to change at 
last the corruptible into the incorruptible, the natural into the spirit- 
ual, redeeming and restoring the entire man, clothing him with the 
garment meet for a blessed and glorious immortality; for "this is the 
Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me 
I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day." 
Let me say it once again, that no man may think there lies any obsta- 
cle to his salvation in a preformed purpose or decree of my Father, 
that all may know how free their access to me is, and how sure and 
full and enduring the life is that they shall find in me. "And this is 
the will of him that sent me, that every one that seeth the Son and 
believeth on him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up 
at the last day. " ' Compare John 6 : 39, 40. 

Overlooking all the momentous truths, all the gracious assurances 
and promises that these words of Jesus conveyed, his hearers fix upon 
a single declaration that he had made. Ignorant of the great mystery 
of his birth, they murmur among themselves, saying, "Is not this Jesus 
the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How is it, then, 
that he saith, I came down from heaven?" Jesus does not answer 
these two questions, any more than he had answered the question 
they had put to him at first as to how he got to Capernaum. He 
sees and accepts the offence that had been taken, the prejudice 
that had been created, and he does nothing to remove it. He enters 
into no explanation of the saying that he had come down from heav- 
en; but he will tell these murmurers and objectors still more plainly 
than he has yet done why it is that they stand at such a distance 
and look so askance upon him. "Murmur not among yourselves." 
1 Hope not by any such questions as you are putting to one another 
to solve the difficulties that can so easily be raised about this or that 
particular saying of mine. What you want is not a solution of such 
difficulties, which are, after all, the fruits and not the causes of your 
unbelief. The root of that unbelief lies deeper than where you would 
place it. It lies in the whole frame and habit of your heart and life. 
The bent of your nature is away from me. You want the desires, the 

Life of Christ. 19 



290 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

affections, the aims, the motives which would create within you the 
appetite and relish for that bread which comes down from heaven. 
You want that inward secret drawing of the heart which also cometh 
from heaven, for "no man can come to me except the Father draw 
him" — a drawing this, however, that if sought will never be with- 
held; if imparted, will prevail, for '-it is written in the prophets, And 
they shall be all taught of God. Every man, therefore, that hath 
heard and learned of the Father cometh unto me." Not that you 
are to imagine that you can go to him as you can go to me, that you 
can see him without seeing me, can hear him without hearing me. 
"Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God, 
he hath seen the Father." It is in seeing me that you see the Father. 
It is in hearing me that you hear the Father. It is through me that 
the drawing of the Father cometh. Open eye and ear then, look 
unto me, hear, and your soul shall live. "Verily, verily, I say unto 
you, he that believeth on me hath everlasting life." He hath it now, 
he hath it in me. "I am that bread of life." A very different kind of 
bread from that of which you boast as once given of old through 
Moses. "Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are 
dead." The manna had no life in itself. If not instantly used, it 
corrupted and perished. It had power to sustain life for a time, but 
none to ward off death. The bread from heaven is life-giving and 
death-destroying. "This is the bread which cometh down from 
heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die. I am the living 
bread; if any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever; and the 
bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the 
world."' 

However puzzled about the expression of his coming down from 
heaven, Christ's hearers might readily enough have understood him 
as taking occasion from the recent miracle to represent himself, the 
truths he taught, and the pattern life he led, as being for the soul of 
man what the bread is for his body. But this change of the bread 
into flesh, or rather, this identifying of the two, this speaking of his 
own flesh as yet to be given for the life of the world, and when so 
given to be the bread of which so much had been already said, star- 
tles and perplexes them more than ever. Not simply murmuring, but 
striving among themselves, they say, "How can this man give us his 
flesh to eat?" a question quite akin to that which Nicoclemus put 
when he said, " How can a man be born again when he is old?" 
and treated by Jesus in like manner, by a repetition, in a still more 
stringent form, of the statement to which exception had been taken: 
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of 



COURSE IN THE SYNAGOGUE. 291 

man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." To speak of eat- 
ing his flesh was sufficiently revolting to those who understood him 
literally ; but to Jewish ears, to those who had been so positively 
prohibited all use of blood as food, how inexplicable, how almost 
impious, must the speaking of drinking his blood have been. Indif- 
ferent to the effect, our Lord goes on to repeat and reiterate, " Whoso 
eatetli my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life ; and I will 
raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my 
blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my 
blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent 
me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, even he shall 
live by me." 

Such, as I have attempted in the way of paraphrase to bring 
them out to view, were the most salient points in our Lord's address, 
and such the links by which they were united. Among all our Lord's 
discourses in Galilee, this one stands by itself distinguished from all 
the others by the manner in which Christ speaks of himself. No- 
where else do you find him so entirely dropping all reserve as to hie 
own position, character, services, and claims. Let him be the eternal 
Son of the Father who veiled the glories of Divinity, and assumed 
the garb of mortal flesh that he might serve and suffer and die for us 
Dien and our redemption, then all that he here asserts, requires, and 
promises appears simple, natural, appropriate. Let the great truths 
of the incarnation and atonement be rejected, then how shall this 
discourse be shielded from the charges of egotism and arrogance? 
But Christ's manner of speaking to the people is here as unprece- 
dented as the way of speaking about himself. Here also there is the 
absence of all reserve. Instead of avoiding what he knew would 
repel, he seems rather to have obtruded it : answering no questions, 
giving no explanations, modifying no statements ; unsparingly expo- 
sing the selfishness, ungodliness, unbelief of his auditors. The strong 
impression is created that by bringing forth the most hidden myste- 
ries of the kingdom, and clothing these in forms liable to give offence, 
it was his purpose to test and sift, not the rude mass of his Galilean 
hearers only, but the circle of his own diseipleship. Such at least 
was its effect; for "many of his disciples, when they heard this, said. 
This is a hard saying ; who can hear it?" Jesus does not treat their 
murmuring exactly as he had that of the Jews; turning to them, he 
says, 'Doth this about my coming down from heaven offend you? 
but "what and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he 
was before?" Doth this about eating my flesh and drinking my 
blood offend you? "It is the spirit that ouickeneth;" the mere 



292 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

flesh without the spirit profiteth nothing, hath no life-giving power. 
It is by no external act whatever, by no outward ordinance or service, 
that you are to attain to the life everlasting. It is by hearing, believ- 
ing, spiritually coming to me, spiritually feeding upon me, that this is 
to be reached. "The words that I speak unto you, they are the spirit 
and they are the life." Still I know, for I must speak as plainly to 
you as to the multitude, "that there are some of you that believe not. 
Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it 
were given unto him of my Father." ' To have hard things said, and 
then to have the incredulity they generated exposed in such a way and 
attributed to such a cause, was what many could not bear ; and so 
from that time many of his disciples went back and walked no more 
with him. With infinite sadness, such a sorrow as he only could feel, 
his eye and heart follow them as they go away ; but he lets them go 
quietly and without further remonstrance ; then, turning to the twelve, 
he says, "Will ye also go away?" "Lord," is Peter's prompt reply, 
" to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life." What 
Jesus thought of this confession we shall see, when not long after- 
wards it was repeated. Now he makes no comment upon it : bnt an 
one upon whose mind the last impression of the day was that of sad- 
ness over so many who were alienated from him, he closes the infcei- 
view by saying, " Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a 
devil?" 

Such were its immediate original results. What would be the 
effect of a first hearing or first reading of this discourse now ? We 
cannot well answer the question ; we have read and heard it so often, 
its phrases are so familiar to our ears, the key to its darkest sayings 
i^s in our hands. Nevertheless, are there not many to whom some of 
its expressions wear a hard and repulsive aspect — are felt, though 
they would scarcely acknowledge this to themselves, as overstrained 
and exaggerated? It is not possible indeed to understand, much less 
to sympathize with and appreciate, the fulness and richness of meaning 
involved in many of these expressions, unless we look to our Lord's 
death as the great propitiation for our sins, and have had some expe- 
rience of the closeness, the tenderness, the blessedness of that mystic 
bond which incorporates each living member of the spiritual body 
with Christ the living head. Had Jesus spoken of himself simply 
and alone as the bread of life, it had been possible to have under- 
stood him as, setting forth his instructions and his example as fur- 
nishing the best kind of nutriment for the highest part of our nature. 
Even so strong a phrase as his flesh being the bread, might have 
been interpreted as an allusion to his assumption of our nature, and 



lata jjiSOOUESE 1^ lflnl SYKAGOUUK. 29S 

to the benefits flowing directly from the incarnation. But when he 
speaks of his flesh being given for the life of the world; when he 
speaks of the drinking of his blood as well as of the eating of his 
flesh; pronounces them to be the source at first and the support after- 
wards of a life that cannot die, and that shall draw after it the resur- 
rection of the body, it is impossible to put any rational construction 
upon phrases like these other than that which sees in them a refer- 
ence to our Lord's atoning death as the spring and fountain of the 
new spiritual life to which through him all true believers are begotten- 

But although the great truth of the sacrificial character of Christ'^ 
death be wrapped up in such utterances, it is not that aspect of it 
which represents it as satisfying the claims of justice, or removing 
governmental obstacles to the exercise of mercy, which is here set 
forth, but that which views it as quickening and sustaining a new 
spiritual life within dead human souls. In words whose very singu- 
larity and reiteration should make them sink deep into our hearts, 
our Saviour tells us that until by faith we realize, appropriate, con- 
fide in him, as having given himself for us, dying that we might live, 
until in this manner we eat his flesh and drink his blood, we have no 
life in us. Our true life lies in union with and likeness unto God, in 
peace with him, fellowship with him, harmony of mind and heart 
ivith him, in the doing of his will, the enjoyment of his favor. This 
life that has been lost we get restored to us in Christ. " He that 
hath the Son hath life." We begin to live when we begin to love, 
and trust, and serve, and submit to our Father who is in heaven; 
when distance, fear, and doubt give place to filial confidence. We 
pass from death unto life, when out of Christ there floweth the first 
current of this new being into our soul. The life that thus emanates 
from him is ever afterwards entirely dependent upon him for its main- 
tenance and growth. 

Every living thing craves food. It differs from a dead thing 
in this, that it must find something out of itself that it can take 
in, and by some process more or less elaborate assimilate to itself; 
using it to repair the waste of vital energy, to build up the fife into 
full maturity and strength. Such a thing as a self-originated, self- 
enclosed, self-supporting life you can find nowhere but in God. Of 
all the lower forms of life upon this earth, vegetable and animal, it is 
true that by a blind, unerring instinct each seeks and finds the food 
that suits it best, that is fitted to preserve, expand and perfect. It is 
the high but perilous prerogative of our nature that we are left free to 
choose our food. We may try, do try — have we not all tried, to 
nourish our souls upon that which does not and cannot satisfy? 



294 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

Business, pleasure, society, wealth, honor — we try to feed our sou] 
with these, and the recurrent cravings of unfilled hearts tell us that 
we have been doing violence to the first laws and conditions of oui 
nature: a nature that refuses to be satisfied unless by an inward 
growth in all goodness, and truth, and love, and purity, and holiness 
It is to all of us, as engaged in the endless fruitless task of feeding 
with the husks of the earth a spirit that pants after the glory, the 
honor, and the immortality of the heavenly places, that Jesus comes 
saying, " Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread, 
and your labor f xr that which satisfieth not?" "I am the bread ol 
life; my flesh is meat indeed, my blood is drink indeed." 

Bread is a dead thing in itself; the life that it supports it did 
nothing to originate. But the bread from heaven brings with it the 
life that it afterwards sustains. Secret and wonderful is the process 
by which the living organism of the human body transmutes crude 
dead matter into that vital fluid by which the ever-wasting frame is 
recruited and renrvigorated. More secret, more wonderful the pro- 
cess by which tho fulness of life and strength and peace and holiness 
that lie treasured up in the living Saviour passes into and becomes 
part of that spiritual framework within the soul which groweth up 
into the perfect man in Christ Jesus. In one respect the two pro- 
cesses differ. In the one it is the inferior element assimilated by the 
superior, the inorganic changed into the organic by the energy of 
the latter ; in the other, it is the superior element descending into the 
inferior, by its presence and power transmuting the earthly into the 
heavenly, the carnal into the spiritual. There are forms of life which, 
derivative at first, become independent afterwards. The child severs 
itself from the parent, to whom it owes its breath, and lives though 
that parent dies. The bud or the branch lopped off from the parent 
stem, rightly dealt with, lives on though the old stem wither away. 
But the soul cannot sever itself from him to whom it owes its second 
birth. It cannot live disjointed from Christ, and the life it derives 
from him it has all the more abundantly in exact proportion to the 
closeness, the constancy, the lovingness of its embrace of and its 
abiding in him. 

Closer than the closest of all earthly bonds is the vital union of 
the believer with Christ. One roof may cover those who are knit in 
the most intLaate of human relationships. But beneath that roof 
within that family circle, amid all the endearing intercourse and corn 
munion, a dividing line runs between spirit and spirit; each dwells 
apart, has a hermit sphere of its own to which it can retire, into 
which none can follow or intrude. But what saith our Lord of the 



THE DISCOURSE IN THE SYNAGOGUE. 295 

connection between himself and each of hi-s own? "He ihat eateth 
my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him." He 
opens himself to us as the hiding-place, the resting-place, the dwell- 
ing-place for our spirit. We flee unto him, and he hides us in the 
secret of his presence, and keeps us secretly in that pavilion. What 
* safe and happy home ! How blest each spirit that has entered it ! 
But more wonderful than our dwelling in him is his dwelling in us. 
What is there in us to attract such a visitant? what room within our 
souls suitable to receive him ? Should he come, should he enter, 
what kind of reception or entertainment can we furnish to such a 
guest? Yet he comes — he deigns to enter — he accepts the poor pro- 
vision — the imperfect service. Nay, more : though exposed to many 
a slight, and many an open insult, he still warts on; has pity, has 
patience, forgets, forgives ; acts as no other guest in any other dwell- 
ing ever acted but himself. " Behold, I stand at the door and knock. 
If any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, 
and snp with him, and he with me." "If any man love me, he will 
keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto 
him, and make our abode with him." 

To a still higher conception of the intimacy of the union between 
himself and his own does Jesus carry us: "As the living Father 
hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me shall 
live by me." It would seem as if all the earthly imagery elsewhere 
employed — that of the union of the branches with the vine, of the 
members with the head, of the building wi-ih the foundation-stone — 
however apt, were yet defective ; as if for the only fit, full emblem 
Jesus had to rise up to the heavens to find it in the closest and most 
mysterious union in the universe, the eternal, inconceivable, ineffable 
union between the Father and himself — "That they all may be 
one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be 
one in us : I in them and thou in me, that they may be made perfect 
in one." 

There is a resemblance approaching almost to a coincidence be- 
tween the language used in the synagogue of Capernaum and that 
used in the upper chamber at Jerusalem. "The bread that I will 
give," Jesus said to the promiscuous audience of Galileans, "is my 
flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." "Take, eat," such 
is his language m instituting the supper; "this is my body broken" — 
or as St. Luke has it — "given for you." In either case the bread 
turns into the flesh or body of the Lord. There had been no wine 
used in the feeding of the five thousand, and so in the imagery of the 
synagogue address, borrowed obviously from that incident, no men- 



298 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

tion of wine was made. There was wine upon the supper-table at 
Jerusalem, and so, just as the bread which was before him was taken 
to represent the body, the wine was taken to represent his blood- 
That eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood, of which so much 
was said at Capernaum, Jesus, in instituting the ordinance of the 
Supper, taught his disciples to identify with a true union with him- 
self. So close is the correspondence that many have been led to 
think that it was to the Eucharist, and to it exclusively that Jesus 
referred in his Capernaum address. We cannot tell all that was then 
rn our Saviour's thoughts. It may have been that in imagination he 
anticipated the time when he should sit down with the twelve. The 
holy communion may have been in his eye as he spake within the 
Galilean s} nagogue. But there is nothing in what he said which points 
to it alone. He speaks of the coming to him, the believing in him, 
as the eating of the bread which is his flesh. He speaks of spiritual 
life owing its commencement, as well as its continuance, to such 
coming, such believing, such eating. Is it in the ordinance of the 
Supper, and in it alone, that we so come and believe, eat and live? 
Is there no finding and having, no feeding upon Christ but in the 
holy sacrament ? Freely admitting that to no season of communion, 
to no spiritual act or exercise of the believer, do the striking words 
of our Lord apply with greater propriety and force than to that sea- 
son and that act, when together we show forth the Lord's death till 
he come again, we cannot confine them to that ordinance. 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 296a 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 

A glance through the outline of this Study will make it clear that 
Christ, while not suspending his gracious works of mercy and his public 
teachings at times, is yet chiefly engaged in training the twelve. His 
very strange method with the Syrophcenician woman may even find 
a measure of its explanation in the Saviour's thought that when he at 
last yields to the touching appeal of this member of the outside Gentile 
world he will carry with him in his act the sympathies and approval 
of this chosen band of Jewish men, as he might not have done if he had 
at once received the woman with his accustomed outward kindness. 

The leader can easily gather a rich cluster of features which reveal 
their fitness to train the twelve, as the Master contrasts his ideals 
with those of the Pharisees, as he commends or condemns first the 
heavenly discernment and then the netherworld blindness of Peter, 
or as he confirms faith by the splendors of the transfiguration. 

PART II. MAIN MINISTRY IN GALILEE. 
Study 10. Training Work with the Apostles. 

(1) Points in which Christ differs from the Pharisaic standard. . 2966-298 

a. The Pharisaic party watchful and intolerant 2966 

6. They hold that one should not eat with unwashed hands 297 

c. Christ retorts by citing their custom of Corban 297, 298 

d. He states that real defilement is from within not from without 298 

e. He affirms that they honor God with lips and not with heart 298 

(2) Christ's retirement with the twelve into northern Galilee 299 

(3) Healing the Syrophgenician woman's daughter 299-304 

a. The woman a Gentile by race- and creed 299 

6. The apparent coldness of Christ to her cry for help 300-302 

c. Her faith rises sublimely above all rebuffs 300-303 

d. Christ warmly commends her faith and grants her request 303, 304 

(4) Circuit through Galilee and Decapolis 304-311 

a. His course along the boundary of Galilee 304, 305 

b. Farther course through Decapolis 305 

c. Cure of the lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and others 305, 306 

d. Feeding of the four thousand 306 

e. Crossing the lake into Galilee, he is confronted by the Pharisees and 

Sadducees 306 

(5) Journey to Cesarea-Philippi 306-313 

a. Crosses the lake to Bethsaida 306, 307 

b. Warns the twelve against the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. 307 

c. Cures a blind man near Bethsaida 307 

d. Aramaic words used by Christ recorded 307, 308 

e. They show that he usually spoke Greek 309 

/. The cases bear witness to Christ's graciousness 309-311 



2966 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

(6) Peter's great confession near Cesarea-Philippi 312-320 

a. The location described 312, 313 

b. Christ's purpose to train his disciples 313 

c. His question: "Whom do men say that I the son of man am?" 313 

d. Peter's confession of faith: "Thou art the Christ, the son of the living 

God" 314 

e. Christ's commendation of Peter 315 

/. Promise to him and the other apostles 316 

g. Meaning of his words 316-320 

(7) Christ foretells his death and resurrection 320-324 

a. Prevalent false ideas of the Messiah 320, 321 

6. Increasing minuteness of Christ's prediction of the closing scenes 321, 322 

c. A proof of his foreknowledge 323 

d. Why his words were misunderstood 323, 324 

(8) Christ's rebuke of Peter 324-329 

a. Peter's hasty and too presuming assertion that the things predicted 

must not come to Jesus 324 

b. It is like another temptation to avoid the way of the cross 324, 325 

c. Christ utters the sharp rebuke because of the sharpness of this temp- 

tation rather than the gravity of Peter's sin 324-326 

d. He unfolds the principle of self-denial in order to service, of losing 

one's life to save it 326, 327 

e. Meanings of the expression about his coming in glory 327-329 

(9) The transfiguration of Christ 329-336 

a. Probable depression of Peter, James, and John 329 

b. One of the lower peaks of Mt. Hermon 329 

c. The ascent and Jesus' prayer 330 

d. His transfiguration 330 

e. Heavenly visitants and converse 330, 331 

/. In what ways the event was of help 332-336 



XII. 

Pharisaic Traditions — The Syrophenician Woman.* 

The Pharisaic party was well organized, watchful, and intoler- 
ant. Its chief seat was in the capital, but it kept up an active cor- 
respondence with and had its spies in all the provinces. Its bitter 
hostility, aiming at nothing short of his death, which had driven 
Jesus from Jerusalem, tracked his footsteps all through his Galilean 
ministry. At an early period of that ministry, Pharisees from Jeru- 
salem are seen obtruding themselves upon him, and now as it draws 
near its close another company of envoys from the capital appears. 
They come down after the Passover, inflamed by the reports carried 
up to the feast of the open rupture that had taken place between 
Christ and their brethren in Galilee. They come to find out some- 
* Matt. 15 :T-28; Mark 7 : 1-30. 



PHARISAIC TRADITIONS. 297 

thing to condemn, and they have not long to wait. Watching the 
conduct of Christ and his disciples, they notice what they think can 
be turned into a weighty accusation against him before the people. 
Seizing upon some opportunity, when a considerable audience was 
present, they say to Jesus, "Why do thy disciples transgress the tra- 
dition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat 
bread." The oral or traditional law, with its multiplied precepts and 
manifold observances which had grown up around the written code, 
had come to be regarded as of equal, nay, in some respects, of supe- 
rior importance. It was the wine, the rulers said, while the other 
was but the. water. The acknowledgment of its authority forming 
the peculiar distinctive badge of Pharisaism, such a weight was 
attached to its observance that breaches of it were looked upon as 
greater sins than breaches of the written law. Among these was 
that of eating with unwashed hands. What with Persians, Greeks, 
and Romans was but a social custom, the neglect of which was only 
a social offence, had been raised among the Jews by the traditions of 
the elders into a religious duty, the neglect of which was an offence 
against God. And so strict were they in the observance of the duty, 
that we read of a Jew of the Pharisaic type who, being imprisoned 
and put on a short allowance of water, chose rather to die than not 
to apply part of what was given to the washing of his hands before 
eating. We can have now but an imperfect conception of how great 
the sin was then thought to be with which those Pharisees from 
Jerusalem charged publicly our Lord's disciples, aiming their real 
blow at him by whose precept and example they had been taught to 
act as they had done. " Why do thy disciples transgress the tradi- 
tion of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat 
bread." No explanation is given — no defence of his disciples is en- 
tered upon. Our Lord has ceased to deal with such questioners as 
being other than malignant enemies. He answers their question only 
by another — "Why do ye transgress the commandment of God by 
your tradition ?" And as they had specified an instance in which the 
traditions of the elders had been violated by his disciples, he in turn 
epecifies an instance in which they, by their traditions, had nullified 
a commandment of God. No human duty was of clearer or more 
stringent obligation than that by which a child was bound to honor, 
love and help his father and his mother. The command enforcing the 
duty stood conspicuously enshrined among the precepts of the Deca- 
logue. But the elders in their traditions had found out a way of 
reading it by which the selfishness, or the covetousness, or the ill-will 
of a child might not only find room for exercise, but might cloak that 



298 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

exercise under a religious garb. All that one, who from any evil 
motive desired to evade the obligation of assisting his parents, had 
to do, was to say "Corban" over that property on which his parents 
might be supposed to have a claim — to declare it to be consecrated, 
bound over to the Lord — and he was free. Father or mother might 
no longer ask or hope for any thing at his hands. The property 
might still be his. He might enjoy the life use of it ; but the vow 
that destined it to God must come in before every other claim. So 
it was that these traditionalists among the Jews of old quenched the 
instincts of nature, gave place to evil passions, and broke one of the 
first and plainest of the divine commands, all under a pretence of 
piety. Nor has the spirit by which they were animated in doing so 
ceased to operate ; nor have we far to go before an exact parallel 
oan be found to the Jewish Corban practice, in the conduct of those 
who, passing by their nearest relatives, whose very poverty supplies, it 
may be, one of the reasons why they are overlooked, bequeath exclu- 
sively to charitable or religious purposes the money that they cannot 
carry with them to the grave. Neither charity nor piety, however 
broad or pretentious the aspects they take, the services that they 
may seem to render, can ever excuse such a trampling under foot of 
the primary ties of nature and the moral duties connected with them. 
And upon all those hospitals, and colleges, and churches that have 
been erected and endowed by funds unnaturally and improperly 
alienated from near and needy relatives, we cannot but see that old 
Jewish word Corban engraved, and beneath it the condemning sen- 
tence of our Lord — " Thus have ye made the commandment of God 
of none effect." 

No further answer will our Lord give to the Pharisees than this 
severe retort. But first to the multitude, and afterwards to his dis- 
ciples, he will say a word or two of that wherein all real defilement 
consists — not in the outward, but in the inward ; its source and seat 
within, and not without. In the evil affections, desires, and passions 
of the heart — in these and what comes out of them pollution lies ; 
not in eating with unwashed hands, nor in the violation of any mere 
external, conventional, traditional usage. 

Jesus had rolled back upon the Pharisees a weightier charge than 
they had brought against his disciples. He had not hesitated openly 
to denounce them to the people as hypocrites, applying to them the 
words of the prophet, "This people draweth nigh unto me with their 
mouth, and honoreth me with their lips; but their heart is far from 
me." They were offended at being spoken to in such a way. Shun- 
ning any further outbreak of their wrath, seeking elsewhere now the 



THE SYROPHCENIOIAN WOMAN. 299 

rest and the seclusion that he liad sought in vain on the eastern side 
of the lake, Jesus retired to the borders of Tyre and Hidon. He went 
there not to teach nor to heai, but to enjoy a few days' quiet and 
repose in the lonely hilly region which looks down upon the two 
ancient Phoenician cities. But he could not be hid. The rumor o! 
his arrival in the neighborhood passed over the borders of the Holy 
Land. It reached a pocr afflicted mother — a widow, it may have 
been — whose little daughter was suffering under the frightful malady 
of possession. This woman, we are told, was a Greek, a Syrophoe- 
nician by nation — a Canaanite. Phoenician was the general name 
given to a race whose colonies were widely spread in very ancient 
times. One division of this race occupied the country from which 
they were driven out by the Israelites ; and as that country bordered 
upon Syria, they were called Syrophoenicians by the Greeks and 
Romans. It was to this tribe that the woman belonged. She was 
a daughter of that corrupt stock whom the Jews were commissioned 
to exterminate. But besides being by nation a Canaanite, she was a 
Greek ; this word describing not her country, but her creed. She 
was a heathen, an idolatress — all such, of whatever country, being 
then called Greeks by the Jews. Such then, by birth, by pedigree, 
by religious faith and profession, was this woman, the first and only 
Gentile — a Canaanite besides— who made a direct personal appeal 
for help to Christ. The only case of a like kind that meets us in the 
Galilean ministry was that of the Roman centurion. But he was 
half a Jew. Moreover, living among Jews, he had his case presented 
to Jesus by the rulers of the Jews, who had the plea to offer on hib 
behalf, that he loved their nation, and had built them a synagogue. 
Here, however, is a Gentile living among Gentiles, who has no Jew- 
ish friends to intercede for her, no services rendered to the Jewish 
people to point to. It is a pure and simple case of one belonging to 
the great world of heathendom coming to Jesus. How is she re- 
ceived? Her case, as she presents it to his notice, is of the very 
kind that we should have said he would be quickest to sympathize 
with and relieve. Meeting him by the way, she cries out in all the 
eagerness of passionate entreaty, " Have mercy upon me, O Lord, 
thou Son of David ; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil." 
Jesus had opened willingly his ear to the nobleman of Capernaum 
pleading for his son ; to Jairus pleading for his daughter ; the very 
sight of the widow of Nain weeping over the bier of her only son had 
moved him, unasked, to interfere. Here is another parent interceding 
for a child. And that child's condition is one of the most pitiable— 
in the tender years of girlhood visited with the most frightful of all 



300 THE LIFE 0*' OHBIST. 

maladies in one of the worst of its forms — grievously tormented with 
a devil. Such a mother, in the agony of such a grief, crying out to 
him to have compassion upon her and upon her poor afflicted child, 
will surely not have long to wait. But he hears as though he heard 
aot, He answers her not a word. The kindest of men are not always 
squally open-eared, open-hearted, or open-ha,nded to the tale of sor- 
row. Take them at some unlucky moment, and a cool or a rough 
reception may await the most urgent of appeals. Has any thing like 
this happened to our Lord ? Has his spirit been fretted with that 
late contention with the Pharisees, wearied and worn with the kind 
of reception his own had given him, so that ear and heart and hand 
are all for the time shut up a.gainst this new and unexpected appeal 
of the stranger? It cannot be. Liable as he was to all common 
human frailties, our Lord was subject to no such moral infirmity as 
that. Disappointment, chagrin, disgust never operated upon him as 
they do so frequently on us — never quenched the benevolence of his 
nature, nor laid it even momentarily asleep. We must look elsewhere 
for the solution of the mystery of the silence — for mystery it was. 
The disciples noticed it with wonder. Their Master had never 
acted so since they had joined him — had never treated another as he 
is treating the Canaanite. But though her cry be thus received, 
making apparently no impression, moving him to no response, she 
follows, she repeats her cry; continues crying till, half in real pity 
for her and half with the selfish wish to be rid of her importunity, 
the disciples came to him saying, " Send her away, for she crieth 
after us." Not that they wanted her to be summarily dismissed, her 
request ungranted. Christ's answer to this application shows that 
he did not understand it in that sense; that he took it as expressive 
of their desire that he should do what she desired and then dis- 
miss her. 

A rare thing this in the history of our Saviour, that he should 
even seem to be less tender in his sympathy for the afflicted than his 
disciples were, that he should need to be importuned by them to 
a deed of charity. But all is rare here ; rare his silence, rare their 
entreaty, and rare too the next step or stage of the incident. Still 
heedless of the woman — neither looking at her nor speaking to her, 
nor apparently feeling for her — Jesus answers his disciples by say- 
ing to them, " I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of 
Israel." He gives this as his reason for paying no attention to this 
Gentile's request. And it is so quietly and calmly said, that it looks 
like the expression of a firm and settled purpose. The poor suitoi 
hears it. Does it not at once and for ever quench all hope within he/ 



THE SYROPHCENICIAN WOMAN. 301 

breast ? His silence might have been due to the absorption of his 
thoughts with other things. It might be difficult to win the atten- 
tion or fix it on one who had so little claim on his regard. But no\* 
she knows that he has heard, has thought of her, but wilfully, delib- 
erately, as it would seem, has waved h,er suit aside. Child of a 
doomed, rejected race, well mightest thou have taken the Saviour's 
words as a final sentence, cutting off all hope, sending thee back 
without relief to thy miserable home, to nurse thy frenzied child in 
the arms of a dull despair. But there was in thee a depth of affec- 
tion for that poor child of thine, and a tenacity of purpose that will 
not let thee give up the case till effort after effort be made. There is 
in thee, more than this, a keenness of intelligence, a quickness to dis- 
cern, that, adverse as it looked, an absolute refusal did not lie wrap- 
ped up in the Saviour's utterance. He is not sent to any but to the 
lost sheep of the house of Israel ; but does that bind him to reject the 
stray sheep of another fold, if perchance it may flee to him for suc- 
cor? He comes as a servant, witli instructions to confine his per- 
sonal ministry to the children of a favored race. But is he not a son 
too as well as a servant ? Are his instructions so binding that in no 
case he may go by a hand's-breadth beyond their line, when so going 
may serve to further the great objects of his earthly mission ? She 
will try at least whether she cannot persuade him to do so. Un- 
dauntedly she follows him into the house into which she sees that he 
lias entered, casts herself at his feet, and says, " Lord, help me !" 
Before, she had called him Son of David, had given him the title 
that, from intercourse with Jewish neighbors, she knew belonged to 
him as the promised Messiah. But now she drops this title. As the 
Son of David, he was not sent but to the Jews. She calls him, as 
she worships, by the wider name, that carries no restriction in it, 
gently intimating that as sovereign Lord of all, he might rise above 
his commission, and go beyond the letter of the instructions he had 
received. "Lord," she says, as she looks up adoringly, beseech- 
ingly, " Lord, help me." She has got him at last to fix his eye upon 
her. Will he, can he refuse to help ? Jesus looks and says, " Let 
the children first be filled. It is not meet to take the children's meat, 
and to cast it to dogs." Last and worst repulse. Bad enough to be 
toll that she lay without the limits of his commission; but worse to 
be numbered with the dogs. Yet still she falters not. She accepts 
at once the reality, the justice, the propriety of the distinction drawn. 
In the one household there were the children of the family ; there 
were also the dogs, and it was right that they should be fed at dif- 
ferent times on different food. In the great human household differ- 



302 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

ences of a like kind existed : there were the favored sons of Abr?v 
ham ; there were the outcast children of Ham and Japhet. She nei- 
ther disputes the fact nor quarrels with those arrangements of divine 
providence under which a different treatment had been given to them ; 
she takes the lowly place that Christ has given her among the out- 
cast tribes — among the dogs! But have not the dogs and the chil- 
dren all one master ? Do they not dwell all beneath one roof ? May 
not even the dogs look for some little kindnesses at their master's 
hands ? The finest and the choicest of the food it is right that the 
childre?i should have, but are there no fragments for them ? " Truth, 
Lord," she says, venturing in the boldness of her ardent faith to take 
up the image that Jesus had used or had suggested, and to construct 
out of it an argument, as it were, against himself — "Truth, Lord; yei 
the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table." 

' Truth, Lord, but thou art the Master ; and there dwells in thee 
such a kind and loving heart, that I will not believe — no, not though 
thine own words and deeds may seem to declare it — that the mean- 
est creature in thy household will be overlooked or unprovided for. 
Truth, Lord, I am not a child, and I ask not, expect not, deserve not 
a child's favor at thy hands. I am but as a dog before thee, and it 
is no part of the children's food ; it is but a crumb from thy richly 
furnished table that I crave ; and what but such among all the rich 
and varied blessings that thou hast come to lavish upon thine own — 
what but such would be the having mercy upon the like of me, and 
healing my poor afflicted child?' The Saviour's end is gained. It 
was a peculiar case, and Christ had met it in a peculiar fashion. He 
was about, still more distinctly and conspicuously than he had done 
in the case of the Koman officer, by act and deed of his own hand, 
to unfold the mystery that had been hid for ages, that the Gentiles 
should be fellow-heirs with the Jews of the great spiritual inheritance 
of his purchase. In doing so he desired to make it patent upon what 
ground and principle the door of entrance was to be thrown open. 
Here was a Canaanitish woman applying to him for help. The curing 
of her daughter was to be the token that however limited for the time 
his own personal ministry was to be, it was not to be fixedly and for 
ever exclusive in its character — confined alone to Jews. Here was a 
Canaanitish woman about to be numbered with those on whose 
behalf bis divine power went forth to heal. To vindicate her admis- 
sion within the sphere of his gracious operations, it was to be made 
manifest that she too, by faith, was a daughter of faithful Abraham. 
Therefore it was that her faith was subjected to such repeated trial, 
that impediment after impediment was thrown before it, that it inighi 



THE SYROPHOENICIAN WOMAN. 303 

be thoroughly tested, and come forth from the ordeal shining in the 
lustre of the fullest and brightest manifestations. 

" woman," said Jesus to her, when the trial was over and the 
triumph complete, " woman, great is thy faith! " Many things 
besides had there been to commend in her — her strong maternal love, 
her earnestness, her importunity, her perseverance, her deep humil- 
ity. Over all these the Saviour passes, or rather he traces them all 
up to their common root — her faith in him, her trust under all dis- 
couragements, in front of all difficulties, in opposition even to his 
own words and acts; her trust in his good will to her, in his disposi- 
tion to pity and to help. This is what he commends, admires. Two 
instances only are recorded in which Jesus passed such an approving 
judgment, and looked with such admiring regard upon the faith of 
those who came to him; and it is remarkable that they are those of 
the two Gentiles — the Roman centurion and the Syrophcenician wom- 
an. " Verily/' said he of the one, " I have not found so great faith; 
no, not in Israel! " " Woman," said he to the other, " great is thy 
faith." Great faith was needed in those who were the first to force 
the barrier that ages had thrown up between Jew and Gentile, and 
great faith in these instances was displayed. Of the two, however, 
that of the purely Gentile woman was the highest in its character 
and the noblest in its achievements. The Roman's faith was in the 
unlimitedness of Christ's power — a power be believed so great that 
even as he said to his soldiers, " Go! " and they went; " Come! " and 
they came; " Do this! " and they did it — so could Jesus say to dis- 
ease and life and death; curing at a distance! saving by the simple 
word of his power! The faith of the Canaanite was not simply in 
the unlimited extent of Christ's power. His power she never for a 
moment doubted. He had no reason to say to her, ' Believest thou 
that I am able to do this? ' But his willingness he himself gave her 
some reason to doubt. Thousands placed as she was would have 
doubted — thousands tried as she was would have failed. Which of 
us has a faith in Jesus of which we are quite sure that it would come 
through such a conflict unscathed? In her it never seems for a 
moment to have faltered. In spite of his mysterious, unexampled 
silence — of the explanation given of the silence that appeared to 
exclude — beneath the sentence that assigned her a place among the 
dogs, her faith lived on, with a power in it to penetrate the folds of 
that dark mantle which the Lord for a short season drew around 
him — to know and see that behind the assumed veil of coldness, 
silence, indifference, repulse, reproach, there beat the willing, loving 
heart, upon whose boundless benevolence she casts herself, trusting, 
and not being afraid. This was her confidence, that there was more 



304 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

love to her in his heart than the outward conduct of Jesus might 
seem to indicate. It was this confidence which sustained her from 
first to last. It was this confidence which carried her over all the 
obstructions thrown successively before her. It was this confidence 
which sharpened her wit, and gave her courage to snatch out of 
Christ's own hand the weapon by which her last and greatest victory 
was won. It was this confidence in him, in spite of all adverse ap- 
pearances, which pleased the Lord so much — for he likes, as we all 
do, to be trusted in — and which drew from him the unwonted expres- 
sion at once of approval and of admiration, " O woman, great is thy 
faith! " It is the same kind of simple trust in Jesus that we all need; 
and in us too, if we but had it in like degree, it would accomplish 
like blessed results. What the silence and the sentences of Jesus 
were to that entreating woman, crying after Jesus to have her poor 
child cured, his ways and his dealings, in providence and in grace, 
are to us crying after him for the healing of our own or others' spir- 
itual maladies. We cry, but he answers not a word; we entreat, but 
he turns upon us a frowning countenance; when he speaks, his words 
seem to cut us off from comfort and from help. But deal as he may 
with us, hide himself as he may, speak roughly as he may, let us still 
believe that there exists in the heart of our E,ecleemer a love to us, 
upon which we can at all times cast ourselves in full, unbounded 
trust. 

"Woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt 
And her daughter was made whole from that very hour." 



XIII. 

The Circuit through Decapolis.* 

We have now to follow Jesus through one of the most singular of 
his journeyings. His work in Galilee was done, but some days were 
still left ere he set his face to go up to Jerusalem. These days were 
devoted to a circuit which carried him in a semicircle round the west- 
ern, northern, and eastern boundaries of Galilee, keeping him outside 
the jurisdiction of Herod, and beyond the reach of the Jewish hierar- 
chy. He was seeking for rest, seclusion, security, and he found them 
where neither the mistaken attachment of his friends, nor the hate of 
his enemies in Galilee, were likely to follow him. First he travelled 
* Matt. 15 : 29-39; 16 : 1-12; Mark 7 : 31-37; 8 : 1-26. 



THE CIRCUIT THROUGH DECAPOLIS. 305 

over the liilly country that lies to the northwest of the sea of Tibe- 
rias. There, as he was passing out of the Galilean territory, he met 
the Syvophoenician woman, and by the manner of his treatment of 
her revealed at once the simplicity, humility, tenacity of her faith, 
and the wide embrace of his own love and power. Crossing the 
boundary-line that divided Palestine from Phoenicia, passing the 
ancient city of Tyre, he proceeded northward towards Sidon, getting 
a glimpse there — it may have been a first and last one — of a country 
in which some of the most ancient forms of heathenism still subsist- 
ed, in the worship of Baal and Astarte. Then, turning eastward, he 
crossed the southern ridge of Lebanon, descended into the valley of 
the Leontes, skirted the base of the snow-capped Hermon, and some- 
where not far from the sources of the Jordan, entered Decapolis. 
This was the name given to a large and undefined region which lay 
around ten cities, to which peculiar privileges were granted by the 
Eomans after their conquest of Syria. All of these, with a single 
exception, lay to the east and southeast of the sea of Galilee. At 
length he came upon that sea, touching it somewhere along its east- 
ern shore, not far, it may have been, from the place where he once 
before, crossing from Capernaum, had landed for a few hours, and 
where he cured the demoniac of Gadara. At the entreaty of the mul- 
titude Jesus had then instantly retired, not suffering the man upon 
whom the cure had been wrought to accompany him, but directing 
him to go and tell what had happened to his family and friends. 
"And he departed," we are told, " and began to publish in Decapolis 
how great things Jesus had done for him; and all did marvel." The 
rumor of that miracle was still fresh, the wonder it had excited had 
not died away, when, coming through the midst of the coast of 
Decapolis, Jesus sat down upon one of the mountains that overlook 
the lake. The community through which he had been moving was 
more than half heathenish, the Jewish faith and worship having but 
little hold east of the river and the lake. Christ's appearance for the 
first time among this rude and essentially Gentile population, and 
the readiness with which he healed the deaf man that had an imped- 
iment in his speech, produced the very effect which in such circum- 
stances might have been anticipated. " Great multitudes came to 
him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, 
and many others," eagerly but somewhat roughly casting them down 
at the feet of Jesus; wondering as at an altogether new sight, 
beyond measure astonished when they saw the dumb made to 
speak, and the blind to see, and the lame to walk, and glorifying, 
not any of their own idols, but glorifying the God of Israel, in whoso 

Life «.f OUrtat 20 



306 THE LIFE OF OHEIST. 

name and by whose power these great works were clone. Matt 
15 : 30, 31, 

Three days they crowded in upon Jesus, till about four thousand 
men, beside women and children, were around him on the mountain- 
side. Many of them had come from a distance, and the food that 
they had brought with them was exhausted. That they might not 
go fasting away from him, to faint, it might be, on the road, Jesus 
repeated the miracle he had once wrought before, on the same side 
of the lake, but at a different season of the year, and for an entirely 
different sort of people. Among the coincidences and the differen- 
ces in the narratives which the evangelists have given of these two 
miraculous feedings of the multitudes, there is one not preserved in 
our English version. After the five thousand were fed with the five 
loaves and the two fishes, the disciples, we are told, took up twelve 
baskets full of fragments. After the four thousand were fed with the 
seven loaves and the few small fishes, seven baskets full of fragments 
were gathered. In the Greek tongue there are two different words, 
describing two vessels of different size and structure, both of which, 
without any mark of distinction between them, our translators of the 
Bible have rendered into the English word " basket." It is one of these 
words which invariably and exclusively is used in describing the first 
miracle, and the other which is as invariably and exclusively used id 
describing the second. The employment in the two cases of two dif- 
ferent kinds of vessel has thus been distinctly marked and preserved 
as one of the slighter circumstantial peculiarities by which the two 
events were distinguished from one another. 

The multitude having been fed and sent away, Jesus took ship 
and sailed across the lake, landing on its western shore between 
Tiberias and Capernaum. He had scarcely reappeared in the neigh- 
borhood in which most of his wonderful works had been w-rought, 
when, once again, in their old spirit of contemptuous challenge, the 
Pharisees demand that he would show them a sign from heaven. 
Now, however, for the first time, the Sadducees appear by their side, 
leaguing themselves with the Pharisees in a joint rejection of Christ— 
in slighting all that he had already said and done — in counting it in- 
sufficient to substantiate any claim on his pait to be their Messiah, 
and in demanding the exhibition of some great wonder in the heav- 
ens, such as, mis-reading some of the ancient prophecies, they falselj 
thought should precede Christ's advent. Saddened and vexed, witfc 
a word of stern rebuke to the men who stood tempting him, and a 
deep sigh heaved over the whole village to which they belonged, Jesus 
abruptly departed, embarking in such haste that the disciples forgot 



THE CIRCUIT THROUGH DECAPOLIS. 307 

to furnish themselves with the necessary supply of food. As they 
landed on the other side, Jesus charged them to beware of the leaven 
of the Pharisees and Sadducees. The pitiful simplicity which they 
displayed in failing to see what Jesus meant, and in imagining that 
because he had used the word "leaven?" it must be their having failed 
to bring bread enough with them that he was pointing at, stirred the 
gentle spirit of their Master, And Jed him to administer a more than 
ordinarily severe rebuke, the main weight of which was laid, not upon 
their stupidity in not understandiug him„but in their want of trust, 
their forgetting how the many thousands had been provided for in 
the desert and on the mountain-side. 

At Bethsaida, to which place Jesus went on his way to Csesarea 
Philippi, they brought a blind man to him, and besought him to 
touch him. This case, and that of the deaf and stammering man 
brought to him in Decapolis, have many points of resemblance. In 
both, those who brought the diseased to Jesus prescribed to him the 
mode of cure. They besought him to lay his hand upon them, or to 
touch them. Was it for the very purpose of reproving and counter- 
acting the prejudice which connected the cure with a certain kind of 
manipulation on the part of the curer, that Jesus in both instances 
went so far out of his usual course, varying the manner of his action 
so singularly, that out of all his miracles of healing these two stand 
distinguished by the unique mode of their performance? This at 
least is certain, that had Jesus in any instance observed one settled 
and uniform method of healing, the spirit of formalism and supersti- 
tion which lies so deep in our nature would have seized upon it, and 
linked it inseparably with the divine virtue that went out of him, 
confounding the channel with the thing that the channel conveyed. 
More and more as we ponder the life of our Redeemer, dwelling par- 
ticularly on those parts of it — such as his institution of the sacra- 
ments — in which food might have been furnished upon which the 
spirit of formalism might have fed, more and more do we wonder at 
the pains evidently taken to give to that strong tendency of our nature 
as little material as possible to fasten on. 

Besides, however, any intention of the kind thus alluded to, the 
variations in our Lord's outward modes of healing may have had 
special adaptation to the state of the individuals dealt with, and may 
have been meant to symbolize the great corresponding diversity that 
there is in those spiritual healings of which the bodily ones were un- 
doubtedly intended to be types. Let us imagine that the deaf stam- 
merer of Decapolis was a man whose spiritual defects were as com- 
plicated as his physical ones ; whose hard, unclean heart it was sin- 



308 THE LIFE OF OHEIST. 

gularly difficult to reach and to renew; who required repeated efforts 
to be made, and a varied instrumentality to be employed, before he 
yielded to the power of the truth, or was brought under its benignant 
sway. Then see with what picturesque fidelity and appropriateness 
t'he slowness and difficulty of the one kind of healing was shadowed 
forth in the other. Jesus took him aside from the multitude, went 
away with him alone into some quiet and secluded place. The very 
isolation — the standing thus alone face to face, was of itself fitted to 
arrest, to concentrate the man's thoughts upon what was about to 
happen. Then Jesus put his fingers into his ears, as if by this very- 
action he meant to indicate the need there was of an operation which 
should remove the obstruction, and that his was the hand to do it. 
Then with a like intent he touched the man's dry and withered 
tongue with fingers moistened with his own spittle. Then he looked 
up to heaven and sighed — the sigh unheard — but the look upward, 
and the emotion which it conveyed, not lost upon the man. Then 
after all these preliminaries, in course of which we may believe that 
whatever of incredulity or whatever of unbelief there may have lain 
within was being gradually subdued, at last he said, Epliphatha, and 
the ears were opened and the tongue was loosed. 

Two things here were peculiar, the sigh and the preserving the 
old Aramaic word which Jesus used. Never in any other instance 
but in this, when Jesus was about to heal, did a sigh escape from his 
lips. What drew it forth here ? It may have been that as he drew 
the man aside and confronted him alone, the sorrowful spectacle that 
he presented became to the quick sympathies of Jesus suddenly and 
broadly suggestive of all the ills that flesh is heir to, and that it was 
over them collectively that the sigh was heaved. Such interpretation 
of its meaning leaves unexplained why it was this case, and it alone, 
which acted in such a manner upon the sympathies of the Redeemer. 
But the sigh may have had a deeper source. If this were indeed a 
man whose soul was difficult of reach and cure, he may have pre- 
sented himself to Jesus as the type and emblem of those obstinate 
cases of spiritual malady, some of which would so long resist the 
great remedy that he came to the earth to furnish. 

After the sigh came the utterance EjjnnJiatha, a word belonging 
to that dialect of the old Hebrew language called the Aramaic, or 
Syro-Chaldaic, which was then current in Judea. But if that was 
the language which Christ ordinarily used — in which, for example, 
the Sermon on the Mount was spoken — why was it that in this and 
one or two other instances, and in these alone, the exact words which 
Christ employed are preserved in the evangelic record? It cannot 



THE CIRCUIT THROUGH DECAPOLIS. 309 

be the peculiarity or solemnity of the occasion, or the particular 
emphasis with which they were spoken, that entitled them to be 
selected and preserved, for we can point to many other occasions in 
allien, had Jesus used Aramaic words, they would have had as good, 
In leed a better claim to have been preserved. The true explanation 
)f Jiis matter seems to be that it was only upon a few occasions that 
Jesus did employ the old vernacular tongue — and that he ordinarily 
spoke in Greek. It has recently, and as I think conclusively, been 
established by a great variety of proof, that in the days of our 
Saviour, the Jews knew and spoke two languages; all the grown-up 
educated population using the Greek as well as the Aramaic tongue. 
The Greek predominated in the schools, was employed almost exclu- 
sively in written documents and by public speakers. It was in this 
language that Jesus addressed the crowds in the courts of the temple 
at Jerusalem, and the multitudes on the hillsides of Galilee. We 
have, therefore, in our Greek New Testament the very words before 
us which came from the lips of our Eedeemer — more sacred, surely, 
than if they had been translated from the Aramaic, however faithful 
the rendering. Assuming that Greek was the language ordinarily 
employed by our Saviour, it would very naturally occur that occa- 
sionally he reverted to the old dialect, and that when he did so the 
words that he used should have been preserved and interpreted. 
Thus, for instance, in the house of Jairus, Jesus was in the home of 
a strictly Jewish family, in which the old language would be used in 
all domestic intercourse, the little daughter who lay dead there hav- 
ing not yet learned perhaps the newly imported tongue. "How 
beautifully accordant then with the character of him whose heart was 
tenderness itself, that as he leaned over the lifeless form of the maiden, 
and breathed that life-giving whisper into her ear, it should have 
been in the loved and familiar accents of the mother tongue, saying, 
'Talitha, cumi!' Although dead and insensible the moment before 
the words were uttered, yet ere the sound of them passed away there 
was life and sensibility within her. Does not every reader perceive 
the thoughtful tenderness of the act, and a most sufficient reason 
why it was in Hebrew and not in Greek that our Lord now address- 
ed her ? And do we not also discover a cause why the fact of his 
having done so should be especially noticed by the evangelist ? Are 
we not thus furnished with a new and affecting example of our Sav- 
iour's graciousness? And do we not feel that St. Mark, the most 
minutely descriptive of all the evangelists, deserves our gratitude 
for having taken pains to record it? Softly and sweetly must the 
tones of that loving voice, speaking in the language of her childhood, 



310 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

have fallen upon the sleeping spirit of the maiden, and by words oi 
tenderness, no less than words of power, was she thus recalled to life 
and happiness."* 

It was perhaps still more natural that Jesus, in addressing the 
deaf stammerer of Decapolis, should have used an Aramaic word- 
He was a rude mountaineer. The vernacular was perhaps the only 
language of which he had any knowledge. At any rate, it was the 
one to which he had been the most accustomed. It could have been 
solely with regard to the man himself th-at Jesus employed the par- 
ticular term Ephpliatha. He meant him to hear and understand it. 
And it was heard, we believe, and understood; for this was not a 
case in which the faculty of hearing and speaking had never existed 
or been exercised. So soon as the physical impediments were re- 
moved, the man could speak as he had spoken before the loss of 
hearing had been incurred. When, after all the other signs of the 
coming cure had been given, the emphatic word was at last pro- 
nounced, how wise, how gracious was it that that word — the first 
heard after so many years — should have been one of his well-known, 
well-loved mother-tongue ! 

But let us turn now for a moment to the cure of the blind man at 
Bethsaida. Here, too, we may believe that there was something 
special in the spiritual condition of the man meant to be typified by 
the manner of his cure. In the taking of him by the hand, the lead- 
ing out of the town, the spitting upon his eyes, and putting his hands 
upon him, Jesus may have had the same objects in view which he had 
in acting in a similar manner with the deaf man at Decapolis, and 
the man born blind in Jerusalem ; but there was a singularity that 
marks this case from all the others. It is the only instance of prog- 
ress in a cure by half and half, of an intermediate stage in the first 
instance reached. Jesus asked him if he saw aught. He looked up 
and said that he saw men as trees walking. He saw them — knew 
them to be men — noticed and described their motion ; but they were 
shapeless to his eye — looked rather like trees than men. It is this 
circumstance which leads us to believe that he had not been blind 
from birth. To endow a man born blind with the full powers of 
vision requires a double miracle — one upon the bodily organ, restor- 
ing to it its powers ; one upon the mind, conf erring upon it the 
faculty that in the years of infancy a long education is required to 
impart. A youth who had been blind from birth was couched by 
Cheselden; but at first and for some time he could not distinguish 
one object from another, however different in shape or size. He had 
* See Roberts' "Discussions on the Gospel," pp. 89, 90. 



THE CIECUIT THROUGH DECAPOLIS. 311 

to be told what the things were, with whose forms he had been famil- 
iar from feeling, and slowly learned to recognize them. And slowly 
was it that we all in our earliest days learned how to use the eye, and 
turn it into the instrument of detecting the forms and the magni- 
tudes and the distances of the objects by which we wore surrounded. 
But here — unless, indeed, we believe that there was a double mira- 
cle — so soon as the man got the full power of bodily vision, he knew 
how to use it, having learned that art before. It pleased the Saviour, 
however, to convey again its lost powers to the organ of the eye step 
by step. There was at first a confusion of the outward forms of things 
arising from some visional defect. That defect removed, all was 
clear; and the subject of this miracle rejoiced in the exercise of a 
long-unused and almost forgotten faculty. It stands a solitary kind 
of cure in the bodily healings of our Lord ; but that of which it is 
the type is by no means so rare. Rather, the rare thing is when any- 
thing like full power of spiritual perception is at once bestowed. It 
is but slowly here that the lost power comes back — that the eye opens 
to a true discernment of the things of that great spiritual world of 
which we form a part — sees them in their exact forms, in their rela- 
tive magnitudes, distances, proportions. Even after the inward eye 
has been purged of all those films which limit and obscure its sight, 
a long, a careful, a painstaking education is required to train it, as 
our bodily one in infancy was trained. Nor let us wonder if along 
the many stages of which this education is made up, we often make 
singular discoveries of how blind we were before to what afterwards 
seems clear as day, or that the operations are often painful by which 
a truer, and a deeper, and a wider spiritual discernment is attained, 
It is the blessed office of our Saviour at once to restore to the inward 
eye its power, and to teach us how to use it. Into his hands let us 
ever be putting ourselves; and let us quietly and gratefully submit 
to that discipline by which our training in the exercise of all oui 
spiritual faculties is carried on. 



S12 THE LIFE OF OHEIST. 

XIV. 

The Apostolic Confession at C^sarea-Philippi.* 

In the mythology of the Greeks the worship of Pan— their sylvan 
deity — was always associated with shady cave or woody grotto. The 
first Grecian settlers in Northern Syria lighted there upon a spot 
singularly suited for such a worship — a cave at the southern base of 
Mount Hermon, and at the northeastern extremity of the valley of the 
Jordan. This cave lay immediately behind a raised yet retired nook 
or hollow among the hills, and immediately beneath a conical height 
of more than one thousand feet, rising between two of those deep ravines 
which run up into the great mountain, upon the summit of which 
height there now stand the noblest ruins that the whole country 
around exhibits ; equal in extent, if not in grandeur, to those of Hei- 
delberg — the ruins of the Saracen castle of Zubeibeh. Immediately 
beneath the entrance into this cave — along a breadth of more than 
one hundred feet — there gush forth from among the stones a thousand 
bubbling rills of water, coming from some hidden fountain-head, and 
from their long, dark, subterranean journey springing all joyously 
together into the light of day, forming at once by their union a stream 
which is one of the chief heads or sources of the Jordan. This lively 
and full-born stream does instantly a stream's best eastern work — 
clothes its birthplace with exuberant fertility, shadowing it with the 
foliage of the ilex and the olive ; covering its green swards with flow- 
ers of every name,, turning it into such a scene that, lost in admira- 
tion, Miss Martineau declares that, out of Poussin's pictures, she 
never saw any thing in the least like it, while Dr. Stanley calls it a 
Syrian Tivoli. 

This chosen spot the first Grecian settlers seized upon and con- 
secrated, making the cave Pan's sanctuary, cutting niches for the 
nymphs out of the solid rock which forms the face of the mountain- 
side ; which niches — the statues that once occupied them gone — are 
still to be seen there ; and called the place Panias, from the name of 
the deity there worshipped. The Romans, when they came, did not 
overturn this worship, but they added a new one. Returning to this 
beautiful nook from having escorted Caesar Augustus to the sea, 
Herod the Great erected a fine temple of white marble to his great 
patron. One of his sons, Herod Philip, in whose territory, as tetrarch 
«£ Iturea and Trachonitis, it was included, extended and embellished 

Matthew 16:1 ft- 19. 



THE APOSTOLIC CONFESSION. 313 

the town which had grown up near the old cavern sanctuary. Think- 
ing to change its name, he called it CsBsarea-Philippi, in honor of 
the Koman emperor, with his own name added, to distinguish it from 
the Csesarea on the seacoast. This new name it bore for a few gen- 
erations, but the old one revived again, and still belongs to it under 
the Arabic form of Banias. 

It was to this Banias, or Csesarea-Philippi, that our Lord pro- 
ceeded, passing through Bethsaida, and up along the eastern banks 
of the Jordan. In that circuit already described he may have visited 
it, and the attractions of the place may have drawn him back, or this 
may have been his first and only visit. It can scarcely be believed 
that he came into the few scattered villages which lay around, and 
the remains of which are still visible, without entering Csesarea-Phi- 
lippi itself. His presence there, out of Judea, in a district covered 
with tokens of heathen worship, his standing before that cave, his 
gazing upon those buildings, those niches, those inscriptions now in 
ruins and defaced, but then telling, in their freshness, of idolatries 
still in living power, carries Jesus farther away from Judaism, and 
brings him into nearer outward contact with Gentile worship than 
any other position in which we see him in the gospel narrative. It 
were presumptuous in us, where no clue is given, to imagine what 
the thoughts and intents of the Saviour were ; yet when we find him 
going so far out of his way, choosing this singular district as the 
place of his temporary sojourn after all his public labors in Galilee 
were over ; when we reflect further that now a new stage of his min- 
istry was entered on, and that henceforth from teaching the multi- 
tudes he withdrew, and gathering his disciples around him in pri- 
vate, began to speak to them as he had never done before, it is 
impossible to refrain from cherishing the idea that, surround 3d now 
by the emblems of various faiths and worships, types of tha motley 
forms of superstition that had spread all over the earth, tin, thoughts 
of the Eedeemer took within their wide embrace that wjrld whose 
faith and worship he had come to purify, and that he hod, in fact, 
purposely chosen, as in harmony with this epoch of his life, and the 
purposes he was about to execute, the unique, secluded, romantic 
district of Ca3sarea-Philippi. 

He was wandering in one of its lonely roads with his disciples, 
his sole companions, when he left them for a little while to engage in 
solitary prayer, (Luke 9 : 18,) to commit himself and his great work, 
as it was passing into a new stage, to his Father in heaven. On 
rejoining them, he put to them the question, " Whom do men say 
that I the Son of man am ?" He knew it already, but for a further 



314 THE LIFE OF CHBIST. 

purpose he would fain have from their lips what the gross result of 
those two years' toil and teaching was — what the ideas were about 
himself, his person, character, and office, which his fellow-country- 
men now generally entertained. They told him — more than one of 
them taking part in the reply — that some said that he was John the 
Baptist ; some that he was Elias ; some Jeremiah ; some, without deter- 
mining which, that he was one of the prophets. His own immediate 
followers had got somewhat further in their conceptions. Listen- 
ing to and believing in, though not fully understanding the testi- 
mony of the Baptist, Andrew had said to his own brother Simon, 
"We have found the Messiah, which is, being interpreted, the Christ;" 
and Nathanael, remembering what the voice from heaven at the bap- 
tism had been reported as declaring, had exclaimed, " Rabbi, thou 
art the Son of God : thou art the King of Israel." Here and there, 
by dumb and blind men and Syrophcenician women, he had been 
hailed as the Son of David or the Son of God. On the first impulse 
of their wonder at all being miraculously fed, five thousand men were 
ready in the moment to say of him that he was the prophet that 
should come into the world. But these were the exceptions — excep- 
tions so rare that they seemed not to his disciples worthy of account. 
Amid all the variety of impressions made upon them by the discourses 
and works of our Lord, the great mass of the people in Judea and in 
Galilee regarded Jesus as the Messiah's forerunner or one of his her- 
alds, not as the Messiah himself. It was the popular belief of the 
period that, prior to the Messiah's advent, one or other of the proph- 
ets was to rise again from the dead. This Jesus might be he. The 
Pharisees had not succeeded in shaking the public confidence in him 
as a pure and holy man, well worthy to be counted as a prophet. 
But they had prevailed in scattering the first impressions that the 
Baptist's ministry and his own words and deeds had created, that he 
was indeed the Christ. And now from the lips of his own followers 
Jesus hears, what was so well fitted to try their faith and their Mas- 
ter's patience, that scarcely anywhere over all the land was there any 
recognition of the Messiahship of Jesus. 

On getting their answer, no word of reproach or complaint escapes 
the Saviour's lips. It was not indeed on his own account, it was on 
theirs, that his first question had been put. He follows it with the sec- 
ond and more pointed one : " But whom say ye that I am ?" Peter, the 
ever-ready answerer, replies, " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
living God." Peter had believed, from the beginning of his connec- 
tion with him, that Jesus was the Christ; a faith which had the great 
Mid acknowledged authority of the Baptist to rest on, and which was 



THE APOSTOLIC CONFESSION. 315 

borne up by the hope that the whole nation would speedily accept 
bim as such. But in the Baptist's death, that authority has been vio- 
lently shaken, and the outward and expected support has utterly given 
way. Many of the Lord's disciples have forsaken him, and looking 
all around, Peter can find few now who so believe. Yet, amid all 
the prevailing unbelief in and rejection of his Master, Peter's faith has 
oeen gaining and not losing strength. Like the inhabitants of Sychar, 
he believed not because of what any one had told him, but upon the 
ground of what he himself had seen and heard and known of Jesus. 
" Thou art the Christ." - Such the Baptist said thou wert — such, though 
thou hast never expressly put forth the claim — such thy words and 
works have been ever asserting thee to be — and such thou truly art.' 
Thus it is that in his good confession Peter suffers not the fickle faith 
and low conceptions of the multitude to affect him. Though he and 
his few companions stand alone, with the whole community against 
them, for himself and for them he will speak out and say, " Thou art" 
— not any one of those prophets, however honorable the name he 
bears — " Thou art the very Christ himself — the Messiah promised to 
our fathers." 

But still another step, in taking which Peter not only confronts 
the existing state of popular belief as to who Jesus is, but goes 
far on in advance of the existing Jewish faith as to who and what 
their Messiah was to be. " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living 
God." We know from sufficient testimony that the Jews universally 
imagined that their Messiah was to be but a man, distinguished for his 
virtues and exalted in his office, but still a man. There has dawned 
on Peter's mind the idea that Jesus the Christ is something more — 
something higher. The voice from heaven had called him the Son 
of God ; Satan and his host had taken up and repeated the epithet. 
What that title fully meant we may not, cannot think that Peter now, 
or till long afterwards, understood ; but that it indicated some mys- 
terious indwelling of the Divinity — some mysterious link between 
Jesus and the Father which raised him high above the level of our 
ordinary humanity, even when endowed with all prophetic gifts — he 
was beginning to comprehend. Obscure though his conceptions 
were, there stood embodied in his great confession a testimony to 
the mingled humanity and divinity of Jesus. In the faith which 
thus expressed itself, Jesus saw the germ of all that living faith bj 
which true believers of every age were to be animated — that faitL 
the cherishing of which within its bosom was to form the very life and 
strength of the community, the Church, which he was to gather out 
from among the nations — the fruit of God's own work within human 



316 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

souls. Seeing this, and being so far satisfied — rejoicing in the assur- 
ance that whatever other men might think or say of him, there were 
even now some human spirits within which he had got a hold that 
nothing could shake, against which nothing would prevail — he turns 
to Peter and says, " Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona." Simon 
Bar-jona ! — the very way in which he named him preparing us for 
words of weighty import being about to be addressed to him. Simon 
Bar-jona, blessed art thou ! I know not if Jesus Christ ever pro- 
nounced such a special individual blessing on any other single man ; 
and when we hear one of our race called blessed by him who knows 
so well wherein the best and highest happiness of our nature con- 
sists, our ear opens wide to catch the reason given for such a bene- 
diction being pronounced. "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona, for 
flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which 
is in heaven." ' Thine own eye hath not seen it, thine own ear hath 
not heard it — it hath not come to thee by any ordinary channel from 
without — it is not due alone to an exercise of thine own spirit within. 
Faint though the light be that has gleamed in upon thy soul and 
lighted up thy faith — faint as the feeblest glimmer of the mom — it is 
a light from heaven, a dawn giving promise of a bright and cloud- 
loss day. It hath come as a revelation from the great Father of 
spirits to thy spirit, Simon Bar-jona ; and therefore a blessed man 
art thou !' And blessed still in the Saviour's judgment — blessed be- 
yond all that this world has in it of blessedness to bestow — is he 
upon whose darkened mind and heart the faintest rays of that same 
heavenly light have shone — the God who commanded the light to 
shine out of the darkness, shining in upon his soul, giving him the 
light of the true knowledge of God in Christ his Saviour ! 

" And I say also unto thee." ' Thou hast said to me, "Thou art 
the Christ," and hast shown that thou knowest what is the true 
meaning of the word ; so now say I unto thee, " Thou art Peter ;" the 
name of my own giving, the fitness of whose application to thee thou 
art even now justifying in thy prompt and bold confession, in thy full 
and resolute faith, in thy firin and immovable adhesion to me, despite 
of all that men think and say of me. Thou art a true Petros — a liv- 
ing stone built upon me, the true Peira, the living and eternal rock — 
the only sure foundation in which you and all may build then trust 
and hopes. And upon thee, as such a stone resting on such a rock, 
as having so genuine and strong a faith in me as the Son of man and 
Son of God, I will build my church. Because of this thine early, full, 
and heaven-implanted faith, thou shalt be honored as one of the first 
foundation-stones on which my church shall be erected. That church 



THE APOSTOLIC CONFESSION. 317 

shall be the congregation of men who share thy faith — who all are 
Peters like thyself — all living stones built upon me as the chief cor- 
ner-stone ; and in a sense, too, built upon thee ; on prophets and 
apostles as laid by me and on me, to form the basis of the great spir- 
itual edifice — the temple of the church.' 

But if the church was to consist of those who believed in Jesm as 
Peter did, where was the promise that it should number many with in 
its embrace ? What the security that it should have any firm or last- 
ing hold ? Was not Jesus at this moment a wanderer — despised and 
rejected — driven forth from among his own — surrounded in this place 
of his voluntary exile among the Gentiles by a few poor fishermen ? 
Where was the earthly hope that the circle of true believers in him 
should widen ? What the prospect that if it did, it could hold its 
ground against all the gathered enmity that was rising to pour itself 
out against it ? Calmly, out of the midst of all these unpropitious and 
unpromising appearances, the words issue from the lips of Jesus, " J 
will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against 
it." The history of eighteen centuries has confirmed the truth of the 
saying. So long has this society of Christian men existed; and 
though it has done much to provoke hostility, and been often very 
unmindful of the spirit and will of him whose name it bears, yet all 
that power and policy, the wiliest intrigues and the fiercest persecu- 
tion could do against it, have been done in vain. 

This is the first occasion on which Jesus used that word — the 
church ; and he named it in his own lifetime but once again. He did 
every thing to lay the true and only foundation of that church ; but 
he did almost nothing with his own hand to erect or organize it. 
Apart from his selecting twelve men to be his personal associates, his 
institution of the office of the apostolate, which there are but few 
who regard as an integral and perpetual part of the church's organi- 
zation — apart from that and his appointment of the two sacraments, 
Jesus may be said to have done nothing towards the incorporation of 
those attached to him into an external institute. Even here, when he 
goes to address a few words of encouragement to Peter, upon whom 
so important services in this department were to devolve, he speaks 
not of the present but of the future : " I will give unto thee the keys 
of the kingdom of heaven." 'When that time comes at which, on the 
great day of Pentecost, the first admissions into my church by bap* 
tism shall take place, then know that the keys of my kingdom are in 
thy hand, and that thou mayest use them in the full assurance thai 
thou art not acting without a due warrant.' Keys are the badges ol 
authority and power and trust, bestowed as the symbols of the office 



318 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

on ministers or ambassadors, secretaries or treasurers of kingdoms, 
on whom the duty lies of admitting to, or excluding from, the privi 
leges and benefits of the commonwealth, disposing or withdrawing 
the royal bounties and favor. Such keys — in a manner appropriate 
to the kind of commonwealth the church is — Jesus here commits to 
Peter, as one of the first and greatest of its office-bearers. In the 
use of any such authority and power as had been given him within 
the church — in admitting to or excluding from its privileges — in taking 
his part in the baptism of the three thousand on the day of Pente- 
cost—in condemning Ananias and Sapphira — in censuring Simon 
Magus — in opening the door to take in the Gentile converts, and pre- 
siding at the baptisms in the household of Cornelius — Peter might 
be weighed down by the sense of the feebleness of the instrument he 
was using, the smallness of the effects that it could produce. To 
comfort and encourage him in the use of the keys when they came to 
be employed by him, Jesus adds, " Whatsoever thou shalt bind on 
earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on 
earth shall be loosed in heaven." 'Act but in the right spirit — follow 
out the directions given — let the law of truth and love but regulate 
your doings, and you may rest assured that doings of yours on earth 
shall be approved and ratified in heaven.' So far, and no farther, as 
it seems to us, do the words of our Saviour, as addressed to Peter, go. 
You are aware that it is upon these words — and upon them almost 
exclusively, for there is no other passage of any thing of a like import 
in the evangelic narrative — the church of Eome claims for St. Peter 
and his alleged successors in the see of Eome a primacy or popedom 
over the universal church of Christ. Upon this claim, so far as it is 
attempted to be erected upon this passage, I have to remark : 

1. It is singular that of the three evangelists who have recorded 
our Lord's question to the apostles, and St. Peter's reply, St. Mat- 
thew is the only one who has added that which Jesus said to him 
after his good confession had been made. Had our Lord's object in 
putting the question been to elicit the confession in order thereupon 
to confer certain peculiar honors and privileges upon St. Peter above 
all the other twelve, would St. Mark and St. Luke have stopped short 
as they do at the confession, and said not a word about Peter and the 
rock — the keys and the kingdom? It is quite true that in many a 
narrative two of the evangelists omit what the third has recorded ; 
but it is never true, as it would be true here if the Roman-catholic 
interpretation of the passage be adopted, that all three give the ini- 
tial or introductory part of a narrative, but that one alone supplies 
that in which the main scope and object of the whole consists. 



THE APOSTOLIC CONFESSION. 319 

2. The claim for a primacy of authority over the other apostles, 
put forward on behalf of St. Peter, rests on the assumption that he, 
and he exclusively, is the rock upon which the church is said to rest. 
I will only say, that as a mere matter of exegesis — that is, of inter- 
pretation of words — it is extremely difficult to say precisely what the 
rock was to which Christ alluded. From the beginning, from Jerome 
and Origen down to our own times, there has been the greatest diver- 
sity of opinion. Did Jesus mean to say that Peter himself — individ- 
ually and peculiarly — was the rock ? or was it the confession that he 
had just made, or was it the faith to which he had given expression, 
or was Jesus pointing to himself when he spoke of this rock, as he 
did elsewhere when he spake of this temple — this shrine — in refer- 
ence to himself ? I have already offered the explanation that appears 
to me the most simple and natural, as flowing not so much out of a 
critical examination of the words as out of a consideration of the 
peculiar circumstances and conditions under which the words were 
spoken ; but I cannot say that I have offered that explanation with- 
out considerable hesitation — a hesitation mainly arising from the fact 
which does not appear in our English version, that Jesus used tw T o 
different words — Petros and Petra — in speaking as he did to the 
apostle. A claim which rests upon so ambiguous a declaration can 
scarcely be regarded as entitled to our support. 

3. Whatever ambiguity there may be now to us, there could have 
been no such ambiguity in the words of Christ to those w r ho heard 
them. They must have known whether or not Jesus meant to desig- 
nate Peter as the rock — to elevate him to a peculiar and exalted posi- 
tion above his brethren. And yet we find that three times after this 
the dispute arises among them which should be the greatest — a dis- 
pute which never could have arisen had Jesus already openly and 
distinctly assigned the primacy to St. Peter — and a dispute, we may 
add, which never would have been settled as Jesus in each case settled 
it, had any such primacy been ever intended to be conveyed by him. 

4. Even admitting that all that is said here was said personally 
and peculiarly of Peter, where is the warrant to extend it to his suc- 
cessors ? If his associates, his fellow-apostles, be excluded, how can 
his successors be embraced? It is ingeniously said here by Roman- 
ists that if St. Peter be the foundation of the Church, then as that 
foundation must abide, there ever must be one to take his place and 
keep up as it were the continuity of the basis of the building. But 
this is to have, not one stone as the foundation, but a series of stones 
laid alongside or upon one another; and where is there a hint of such 
a thing? 



320 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Fifthly, and chiefly. All that is said here to Peter was said twioo 
afterwards by Christ to all the twelve and to all the church. You 
have but to turn to the eighteenth chapter of St. Matthew, and read 
there the eighteenth and nineteenth verses, and to the gospel of St. 
John, and read there in the twentieth chapter, from the nineteenth 
to the twenty-third verse, to be fully satisfied that, put what inter- 
pretation you may upon the words spoken at Csesarea-Philippi to St. 
Feter, they conveyed to him no power or privilege beyond that which 
Jesus conferred upon the entire college of the apostles, and in its col- 
lective capacity upon the church.* 



xv. 

The Rebuke of St. Peter. 1 

Jesus had tested the faith of the apostles. Their reply to his 
pointed interrogation, "But whom say ye that I am?" was so far sat- 
isfactory. They had not been influenced either by the hostility of the 
Pharisees, or the low and unworthy imaginations of the people. They 
were ready to acknowledge the Messiahship of their Master, such as 
they understood it to be, and had risen even to some dim conception 
of his divinity. They were all ready to adopt the declaration of their 
spokesman as the expression of their faith, "Thou art the Christ, the 
Son of the living God." 

But in this faith of theirs there was one great and fatal defect. 
Neither they, nor any of their countrymen of that age, had asso- 
ciated with the advent of their Messiah any idea of humiliation, 
rejection, suffering unto death. Obscure he might be in his first 
appearances, and difficult of recognition ; obstacles of various kinds 
might be thrown in his path, over which he might have laboriously 
to climb ; but sooner or later the discovery of who and what he was 
would burst upon the people, and by general acclaim he would be 
exalted to his destined lordship over Israel. One, coming unto his 
own, and by his own received not ; asking not, and getting not, any 
honor from men ; walking in lowliness all his days ; a man of many 
and deeply-hidden griefs, misunderstood by the great mass of the 
people, despised and rejected by their rulers, taken at last to be 
judged and condemned as a deceiver of the people, a vilifier of Moses, 
a blasphemer against God; crucified at last as a malefactor—it hud 

• See "The Forty Days after our Lord's Resurrection, " pp. 807-810. 
t Matt. 16 : 21-28 ; Mark 8 : 31-38 ; 9 : 1 ; Luke 9 : 22-27. 



THE REBUKE OF ST. PETER. 321 

never entered into their thoughts that such a one could be their Mes- 
siah. He might suffer somewhat, perhaps, at the hands of his own 
and Israel's enemies; possibly he might have to submit to death, the 
common lot of all men ; but that he should suffer at the hands of the 
very people over whom he came to reign, and that by their hands he 
should be put to death — no throne erected, and no kingdom won — 
this was not only alien from, it was utterly contradictory to, their 
conceptions and their belief. Yet all this was true ; and from their 
earlier and false ideas the disciples had to be weaned. Jesus did 
this gradually. At first, during all his previous converse with them 
while engaged in his public labors in Judea and Galilee, he had care- 
fully abstained from saying any thing about his approaching suffer- 
ings and death. Not that these were either unforeseen or forgotten 
by him. When alone in the midnight interview with Nicodemus, he 
could speak plainly of his being lifted up upon the cross as the bra- 
zen serpent had been upon the pole in the wilderness, that whosoever 
looked upon him believingly might be saved. To the people of Judea 
and Galilee he could drop hints, which, however obscure to his hear- 
ers, tell us of a full knowledge and foresight on his part of all that 
awaited him. He could point to his body as to the temple, which, 
though destroyed, in three days he should raise up again. He could 
tell his Galilean audience the sign that was to be given to that gen- 
eration ; that as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's 
belly, the Son of man should be three days and three nights in the 
heart of the earth. But never till now, in any of his private conver- 
sations with his disciples, had he alluded to this topic. He had 
allowed them to take the natural and full impression which his teach- 
ing and miracle-working, and the whole tenor of his life and conver- 
sation, were fitted to make upon open, honest, devout-minded men. 
Their knowledge of him, their faith in him, he had left to grow, till 
now, as represented in the confession of St. Peter, it seemed strong 
enough to bear some pressure. They might now be told what it had 
been out of time to tell them earlier. And if they were to be told at 
all beforehand of the dark and tragic close, it would seem to be the 
very best and most fitting occasion to begin, at least, to make the 
disclosure to them now, when our Lord himself, ceasing from his 
public ministry, had sought these few days' quiet in the neighbor- 
hood of CaBsarea-Philippi, that his own thoughts might be turned to 
all that awaited him when he went up to Jerusalem. " From that 
time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples how he must go unto 
Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and 
scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day." A few 

Life «f ChrUt 21 



322 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 



days after this, as they descended irora the Mount of Transfigura- 
tion, Jesus charged Peter and James and John, saying, " Tell the 
Tision to no man till the Son of man be risen from the dead." A few 
days later, while they were still in Galilee, passing through it so pri- 
vately that it evidenced a desire that no man should know it, (Mark 
9 : 30,) Jesus said to his disciples, " Let these sayings sink down into 
your hearts, for the Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of 
men, and they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised 
again." After the raising of Lazarus there was a brief retreat to 
Peraaa, till the time of the last Passover drew on. There was some- 
thing very peculiar in the whole manner and bearing of our Lord 
when, leaving this retreat, he set forth on his final journey to Jeru- 
salem. He stepped forth before his disciples, "and they were ama- 
zed, and as they followed they were afraid." It was while they were 
on the way thus going up to Jerusalem, that he took the twelve apart, 
and said to them, " Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things 
that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be 
accomplished ; for he shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and 
unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, and shall 
deliver him to the Gentiles, and they shall mock, and shall scourge, 
and shall spit upon, and shall crucify him, and the third day he shall 
rise again." Matt. 20 : 17-19 ; Mark 10 : 32-34 ; Luke 18 : 31-34. It 
thus appears that four times at least before the event — thrice in Gal- 
ilee and once in Peraea — Jesus foretold with growing minuteness of 
detail his passion and death ; specifying the place — Jerusalem ; the 
time — the approaching Passover; the agents — the chief priests, 
scribes, and Gentiles ; the course of procedure — his betrayal into the 
hands of the Jewish authorities, his delivery by them into the hands 
of the Gentiles ; the manner of his death — crucifixion under a judi- 
cial sentence ; some of the accompanying circumstances — the scourg- 
ing, the mocking, the spitting. Any one placed in the position of 
Jesus — seeing the rising tide of bitter enmity, and knowing the goal 
at which it aimed — might have conjectured that nothing short of the 
death of their victim would appease the wrath of his enemies. But 
what mere human foresight could have foretold, at Caasarea-Philippi, 
that Herod would not anticipate the sacerdotal party, and seize upon 
Jesus on his way through Galilee, and crown the Baptist's murder 
by that of his successor ? What mere human foresight could have 
foretold that after so many previous attempts and failures, the one at 
the next Passover season would succeed ; that Jesus would not per- 
ish, as Stephen did, in a tumultuous outbreak ; that all the formali- 
ties of a trial and condemnation would be gone through, and death 



■a- 
ba 



THE REBUKE OF ST. PETER. 323 

by crucifixion be the result ? Nor will it help to furnish us with any 
natural explanation of these foretellings of his sufferings and death 
by Jesus, to say that he gathered them from the prophecies of the 
Old Testament, with which we know him to have been familiar, and 
to which, indeed, even in these foretellings, he pointed ; for, much as 
'Jiose prophecies did convey, they fell far short of that particularity 
which characterizes the sayings of our Lord. Receiving the account 
of the evangelists as genuine and true, we are shut up to the conclu- 
sion that in regard to his passion and death Jesus manifested before- 
hand a foreknowledge proper only to him who knows all ends from 
their beginnings ; and that still more was this the case as to his res- 
urrection, which he predicted still oftener, and could not have pre- 
dicted in plainer or less ambiguous terms. 

It may for a moment appear strange that the disciples were so 
taken by surprise when the death and the resurrection of their Mas- 
ter actually took place. How could this be, we are apt to ask our- 
selves, after such distinct and unambiguous declarations as those 
which we have quoted? Let us remember, however, that the same 
authority which instructs us that these predictions were uttered, 
informs us that they were not understood by those to whom they were 
in the first instance addressed. "They understood not the saying, 
and it was hid from them, and they feared to ask him." Luke 9 : 45, 
"And they kept that saying with themselves, questioning one with 
another what the rising from the dead should mean." Mark. 9:10. 
The words of Jesus were hi themselves easy enough to understand; 
but was it figuratively or literally they were to be taken? We can 
scarcely judge aright of the perplexity into which so unexpected an 
announcement must have thrown the disciples at this stage of their 
acquaintance with Christ, nor understand how natural it was that 
they should explain them away. We so often see them, with other 
and less difficult subjects, taking what he meant literally as if it were 
figuratively spoken, and what he meant figuratively as if it were to be 
literally understood — that it takes the edge off our wonder that in 
this instance the disciples should have hesitated how to take the 
words that they had heard. The expression, "rising from the dead," 
the one that appears to have perplexed them the most, appears to 
us one of the simplest. Yet, when we put ourselves exactly in their 
position, we begin to see that they had more ground for their per- 
plexity than is at first apparent. A raising from the dead was what 
they had themselves witnessed. In the general resurrection of the 
dead they believed. There was nothing, therefore, creating any diffi- 
culty in the way of their understanding the mere literal signification 



324 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 



of the phrase — rising from the dead. But the resurrection of Jesus- 
what could it mean? It could not be his sharing in the general res- 
urrection of all the dead that he was speaking of. But was he to die 
and to rise and to remain risen? or to die and to rise and to die 
again? He could raise others from the dead, but if he were to diej 
who was to raise him? Need we be surprised if, with their notions 
of who and what their Messiah was to be, the disciples should at times 
have believed that it was of some spiritual death and resurrection — 
some sinking into the grave and rising again of his cause and king- 
dom — that Jesus spoke? 

At first, indeed, and before any time for reflecting upon it is 
given, St. Peter seizes upon the natural meaning of the words that he 
had heard, and interprets them generally as predicting suffering and 
death to his Master, and, offended at the very thought of a future 
so different from the one that they all had anticipated, in the heat of 
his surprise and indignation, buoyed up, no doubt, by the praise that 
had just been bestowed upon him, he forgets himself so far as actually 
to lay hold by arm or garment of our Lord, and in the spirit of a 
patron, or protector, he begins to rebuke him, saying, " Be it far from 
thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee." Kindliness in the act and 
speech; a strong interest in Christ's mere personal welfare — but igno- 
rance and presumption too ; forgetfulness of the distance that sepa- 
rated him from Jesus, and a profound insensibility to the higher 
spiritual designs which the sufferings and death of Jesus were to be 
the means of accomphshing. Now let us mark the manner in which 
this interference is regarded and treated by Christ, He turns about, 
he looses himself from the too familiar hold, he looks on his disciples 
as if craving their special notice of what he was about to say and do, 
and by that look having engaged their fixed regard, he says to Peter, 
"Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence to me." What was 
the secret of the quickness, the sharpness, the stern severity of this 
rebuke? Why was it that, for the moment, the apostle disappeared 
as it were from the Saviour's view, and Satan, the arch- tempter, took 
his place? Why was it that the very word which our Lord had 
applied to Satan in the last and greatest of the temptations of the 
wilderness, is here used again, as if the great tempter had reappeared 
and renewed his solicitation? It was because he found the feet of 
Peter had actually stepped upon the very ground that Satan, m his 
great temptation of our Saviour had occupied. Take all the king- 
doms of the world — such had been the bribe held out — take them 
now — save thyself all the toil, the agony — let the cup pass froin thee, 
step into tne tnrone without touching or tasting the bitterness of the 



. 



THE REBUKE OF ST. PETER. 326 

cross Promptly, indignantly, was this temptation repelled in the 
wilderness; and when it reappears in the language of his apostle, 
"Be it far from thee: this shall not be unto thee" — when once again 
he is tempted to shrink from the sufferings and the death in store for 
hLn — as promptly and as indignantly is it again repelled, Peter being 
regarded as personating Satan in making it, and addressed even as 
the great tempter had been. 

What a difference between the two sayings, uttered within a few 
minutes of each other! "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh 
and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in 
heaven." "Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence" — or, 
as the word means, thou art a stumbling-stone, a rock of offence — 
"unto me." Can it be the same man to whom words of such different 
import are addressed ? Yes, the same man in two quickly succeed- 
ing states. Now (to the eye which seeth in secret) he appears as one 
whose mind the Father hath enlightened, now as one whose heart 
Satan has filled and occupied ; now the object of praise and blessing, 
now of censure and pungent rebuke. And does not this changing 
Peter, with those two opposite sides of his character turned so rapidly 
to Christ, stand a type and emblem of our weak humanity? of the 
ductile nature that is in the best of the followers of our Lord ? of the 
quick transitions that so often take place within us ? our souls now 
&hone upon by the light from heaven, now lit up with fires of another 
kindling ? What lessons of humility and charity do such experiences 
in the history of the best of men inculcate ! 

Peter must have been greatly surprised when, shaken off by Jesus, 
he was spoken to as if he were the arch-fiend himself. Unconscious 
of any thing but kindly feelings to his Master, he would be at a loss 
at first to know what sinful, Satanic element there had been in the 
sentiments he had been cherishing — the words that he had used. It 
might at once occur to him that he had been too familiar — had used 
too much liberty with him whom he had just acknowledged to be the 
Christ, the Son of the living God. But it surely could not be simply 
and solely because of his being offended at the freedom taken, that 
Jesus had spoken to him as he did. Some light may have been 
thrown upon the matter, even to Peter's apprehension at the time, by 
our Lord's own explanatory words : " Get thee behind me, Satan : for 
thou savorest not the things that be of God, but the things that be 
of men." There are two ways of looking upon those sufferings and 
death, of which, now for the first time, Jesus had begun to speak — 
the selfish, earthly, human one, and the spiritual, the divine. Peter 
was thinking of them solely under the one aspect, thinking of them 



326 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

in their bearing alone upon the personal comfort, the outward estate 
and condition of his Lord. He would have Jesus avoid them. He 
himself would stand between them and his Master, and not suffer 
them to come upon him ; inflicting, as he imagined they would do, 
such great discredit and dishonor upon his name and cause. But 
he knew not, or forgot, that it was for this end that Jesus came into 
the world, to suffer and die for sinners ; that the cup could not pass 
from him, the cross could not be avoided, without prophecies being 
left unfulfilled, purposes of God left unaccomplished, the sin of man 
left unatoned for, the salvation of mankind left unsecured. He knew 
not, or forgot, that he was bringing to bear upon the humanity of our 
Lord one of the strongest and subtlest of all the trials to which it was 
to be exposed, when in prospect of that untold weight of sorrow 
which was to be laid upon it in the garden and upon the cross, the 
instincts of nature taught it to shrink therefrom, to desire and to pray 
for exemption. It was the quick and tender sense our Lord had of 
the peculiarity and force of this temptation, rather than his sense of 
the singularity and depth of Peter's sinfulness, which prompted and 
pointed his reproof. At the same time he desired to let Peter know 
that the way of looking at things, in which he had been indulging, 
had in it that earthly, carnal element which condemned it in his sight. 
Nay, more; he would seize upon the opportunity now presented, to 
proclaim once more, as he had so often done, that not in his own case 
alone, but in the case of all his true and faithful followers, suffering, 
self-denial, self-sacrifice, must be undergone. He had noticed the 
approach of a number of the people who had assembled at the sight 
of Jesus and his apostles passing by their dwellings. These he called 
to him, (Mark 8 : 34,) as if wishing to intimate that what he had now 
to say, though springing out of what had occurred, and addressed in 
the first instance to the twelve, was yet meant for all — was to be taken 
up and repeated, and spread abroad, as addressed to the wide world 
of mankind. 'If any man,' he said, 'whosoever, whatsoever he be, 
will come after me, be a follower of me, not nominally, but really, let 
him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. No 
other way there was for me, your Redeemer, your forerunner, than by 
taking up the cross appointed, amd on that cross bearing your trans- 
gressions; and no other way for you to follow me, than by ea^h of 
you voluntarily and daily taking up that cross which consists in the 
repudiation of self-indulgence as the principle and spirit of your life, 
in the willing acceptance of self-denial as the fixed condition f the 
new life's growth and progress in your souls, in the crucifying of 
every sinful affection and desire. " For whosoever will save his life 



THE EEBUKE OF ST. PETER. 327 

shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the 
gospel's, shall save it." Let it be your main, supreme, engrossing 
object, to save your life ; to guard yourself against its ills, to secure 
its benefits, its wealth, its honors, its enjoyments — the end shall be 
that the very thing you seek to save you certainly shall lose. But if 
fron: a supreme love to Christ, and a predominating desire to please 
him, you are willing to lose life, to give up anything which he calls 
you to give up, the end shall be that the very thing that you were 
ready to lose, you shall at last and most fully gain. For take it even 
as a mere master of profit and loss — but weigh aright what is thrown 
into the scale, when you are balancing earthly and eternal interests — 
" What is a man profited if he gain the whole world ?" ' No man ever 
did so ; but suppose he did, imagine that one way or other the very 
whole, the sum-total that this world — its pursuits, its possessions, its 
enjoyments, can do to make one happy — were grasped by one single 
pair of arms into one single bosom, would it profit him, would he be 
a gainer if, when the great balance was struck, it should be found — 
that in gaming the whole world he had lost his own soul ? that it had 
been lost to God and to all its higher duties, and so lost to happiness 
and lost for ever ? For if a man once lose his soul, where shall he 
find an equivalent in value for it ? where shall he find that by which 
it can be redeemed or bought again ; what shall he find or give in 
exchange for his soul? Too true, alas, it is, that, clear though this 
simplest of all questions of profit and loss be, many will not work it 
out, or apply it to their own case, content to grasp what is nearest, 
the present, the sensible, the earthly, and to overlook the more 
remote, the unseen, the spiritual, the eternal. Too true that what 
hinders many from a hearty and full embrace of Christ and all the 
blessings of his salvation, is a desire to go with the multitude; a 
shrinking, through shame, from any thing that would separate them 
from the world. Would that upon the ears of such the solemn words 
of our Lord might fall with power : " Whosoever shall be ashamed of 
me, and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when 
he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father's, and of the holy 
angels." Luke 9 : 26. And at that coming, when the earth and the 
heavens shall pass away, and we shall find ourselves standing before 
the great white throne, and in the presence of that vast community 
of holy beings, how will it look then to ha^e been ashamed of 
lesus now? What will it be then to find him ashamed of us, dis- 
owning us? 

How strangely must this about the Son of man so coming with 
power and great glory, have sounded in the ears of those who had 



328 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

just been listening to him as lie told how that he must suffer manj 
things, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. Beyond 
that time of dishonor and suffering and death, predicted as so near, 
here was another advent of the Son of man, around which every cir- 
cumstance of glory and honor was to be thrown. But when was that 
advent to be realized? Of the day and the hour of its coming no 
man was to know ; but this much about it Jesus might even now 
reveal, that there were some standing then before him who should 
not taste of death till they saw the kingdom of God set up, till they 
saw Jesus coming in his kingdom. It could not be of his personal 
and final advent to judgment that Jesus meant here to speak, for 
that was not to occur within the lifetime of any of that generation. 
Those, besides, who were to be alive and to be witnesses of that 
advent were never to taste of death. Jesus could only mean to speak 
of such a visible institution of his kingdom as should carry with it 'a 
prelude and prophecy of the great consummation. As it is now 
known that of the twelve apostles John and Philip alone survived the 
great catastrophe of the destruction of Jerusalem, when the Judaic 
economy which Christ's kingdom was meant to supersede was set 
aside, it has been generally believed that it was to that particular 
epoch or event that Jesus here referred. If we reflect, however, that 
it was to the general audience by whom he was at the time surround- 
ed, and not exclusively to the twelve, that Jesus addressed these 
words, we may be the more disposed to believe that it was to the 
general fact of the open establishment of his kingdom upon earth — 
that kingdom which was erected on the day of Pentecost, and which 
came forth more conspicuously into notice when the Jewish ceremo- 
nial expired, and it took its pl&,ce — that our Saviour alluded. Some 
of those to whom Jesus was speaking at Caesarea-Philippi were to 
witness the setting up of this kingdom within the souls of men, and in 
this setting up were to behold the visible pledge that he would come 
again the second time, to bring the present economy of things to its 
close. 

Let us apply the saying of our Lord in this way to ourselves. 
He has a kingdom, not distinguished now by any tokens of external 
splendor — his kingdom within the soul. Before we taste of death we 
may, we ought, to know that kingdom, to enter into it, be enrolled as 
its subjects, be partakers of its privileges and blessings. And if so 
by faith we see and own our Lord, yielding ourselves up to him as 
the Christ, the Son of the living God, who has come in the name of 
the Lord to save us. then when we close our eyes in death, we may do so 
in the humble confidence that when he comes in his own glory, and 



THE TEANSFIGUBATION. 329 

Hit glory of the Father, and the glory of the holy angels, we shall 
not be ashamed before him at his coming, and he will not be ashamed 
of us, but will welcome us into that kingdom which shall never be 
moved, whose glory and whose blessedness shall be full, unchange- 
able, eternal. 



XVI. 

The Transfiguration-.* 

Six days elapsed after our Lord's first foretelling of his approach- 
ing death. These days were spent in the region of Csesarea-Plrilippi 
and appear to have passed without the occurrence of any noticeable 
event : days, however, they undoubtedly would be of great perplexity 
and sadness to the disciples. They had so far modified their first 
beliefs and expectations, that they were ready to cleave to their 
Master in the midst of prevalent misconception and enmity. But 
this new and strange announcement that he must go up to Jerusalem, 
not only to be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, but 
to be put to death and raised again the third day, has disturbed their 
faith, and filled their hearts with sorrowful anxieties — a disturbance 
and anxiety chiefly, we may believe, experienced by those three of the 
twelve already admitted by Jesus to more intimate fellowship and 
confidence. The six days over, bringing no relief, Jesus takes these 
three "up into a high mountain apart." 

Standing upon the height which overlooks Csesarea-Philippi, 1 
looked around upon the towering ridges which Great Hermon, the 
Sheikh of the Mountains, as the Arabs call it, projects into the plain. 
Full of the thought that one of these summits on which I gazed ha«J 
in all probability witnessed the transfiguration, I had fixed upon one 
of them which, from its peculiar position, form, and elevation might 
aptly be spoken of as a " high mountain apart," when casting my eye 
casually down along its sides as they sloped into the valley, the 
remains of three ancient villages appeared dotting the base. I 
remembered how instantly on the descent from the mountain Jesus 
had found himself in the midst of his disciples and of the multitude, 
and was pleased at observing that the mountain-top I had fixed upon 
"01/ )t all the requirements of the gospel narrative. If that were indeed 
ihe mountain-top up to which Jesus went, he never stood so high 
above the level of the familiar lake, nor did his eye ever sweep so 
• Matt. 17 : 1-13 ; Mark 9: 2-13 ; Luke 9 : 28-36. 



330 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

broadly the hills of Galilee. Whichever the mountain was, the shades 
of evening were falling as Jesus climbed its sides. He loved, we 
know, the stillness of the night, the solitude of the mountain. He 
sought them for the purposes of devotion — in the loneliness, the 
calmness, the elevation, finding something in harmony with prayer. 
Generally, however, on such occasions he was alone. He either sent 
his disciples away or separated himself from their society. Now, 
however, as anticipating what was about to happen, he takes with 
him Peter and James and John, the destined witnesses of his humil- 
iation and agony in the garden. The sun sinks in the west beneath 
the waters of the Great Sea as the top of the mountain is reached. 
Night begins to draw its mantle round them, wrapping in obscurity 
the world below. Jesus begins to pray. The three, who rest a little 
space away from him, would join in his devotions, but wearied with 
the ascent, less capable of resisting the coming-on of night and the 
pressure of fatigue, their eyes grow heavy till they close in sleep — 
the last sight they rest on, that sombre figure of their Master; the 
last sound on their listening ear, the gentle murmur of his ascending 
prayers. From this sleep they waken, not at the gentle touch of the 
morning light, not to look down upon the plain below, seen under the 
beams of the rising day — with stroke of awakening power, a bright, 
effulgent radiance has fallen upon their eyelids, and as they lift them 
up, while all is dark below, the mountain-top is crowned with light, 
and there before them now there are three forms: their Master — 
"the fashion of his countenance altered" — his face shining as the 
sun — lit up, not alone, as the face of Moses once was, by the linger- 
ing reflection of the outward glory upon which it had gazed, but illu- 
mined from within, as if the hidden glory were bursting through the 
fleshy veil and kindling it into radiance as it passed — his raiment shi- 
ning, bright as the glistening snow that lay far above them upon the 
highest top of Hermon — exceeding white, so as no fuller on earth 
could whiten them ; and beside him, appearing too in glory, yet in 
glory not like his — dimmer and less radiant — their forms, their atti- 
tudes, their words all showing that they came to wait on him and 
do him homage — Moses the lawgiver, and Elijah the reformer and 
restorer of the Jewish theocracy. Whence came they? In what 
form did they now appear? How came Peter and James and John 
at once to recognize them ? They came from the world of the dead, 
the region that departed spirits occupy. Elijah did not need to bor- 
row for this occasion his old human form. He had carried that with 
hiin in the chariot of fire — the corruptible then changed into the 
incorruptible — the mortal having then put on immortality ; and now 



THE TRANSFIGURATION. 331 

in that transfigured body he stands beside the transfigured form of 
Jesus. Moses had died, indeed, and was once buried ; but no man 
knew where nor how, nor can any man tell us in what bodily or mate- 
rial shape it was that he now appeared, nor what there was, if any 
thing, about the external appearance either of him or of Elijah, whit k 
helped the apostles to the recognition. In some way unknown, the 
recognition came. It was given them to know who these two shining 
strangers were. It was given them to listen to, and so far to under- 
stand, the converse they were holding with Jesus, as to know that 
they were speaking to him about the decease he was to accomplish 
at Jerusalem. But it was not given to them either immediately or 
any time thereafter to report, perhaps even to remember, the words 
they heard. We must remain content with knowing nothing more 
about that conversation — which, whether we think of the occasion or 
the speaker or the subject-matter, appears to us as the sublimest 
ever held on earth — than generally what its topic was. But of what 
great moment even that information is we shall presently have to 
speak. Their mysterious discourse with Jesus over, Moses and Elias 
make a movement to retire. Peter will not let them go — will detain 
them if he can. He might not have broken in upon his Master while 
engaged in converse with them ; but now that they seem about to 
withdraw, in the fulness of his ecstatic delight, with a strong wish to 
detain the strangers, a dim sense that they were in an exposed and 
shelterless place, and a very vain imagination that the affording of 
some better protection might perhaps induce them to stay, and that 
if they did, they might all take up their permanent dwelling here 
together, he cannot but exclaim, " Master, it is good for us to be 
here: and let us make three tabernacles;" (three arbors or forest- 
tents* of the boughs of the neighboring trees;) "one for thee, and 
one for Moses, and one for Elias." Not knowing what he said, the 
words are just passing from his babbling lips, when the eye that fol- 
lows the retreating figures is filled with another and a brighter light. 
A cloud comes down upon the mountain-top — a cloud of brightness — 
a cloud which, unfolding its hidden treasures, pours a radiance down 
upon the scene that throws even the form of the Redeemer into 
shadow, and in the darkness of whose excessive light the forms of 
Moses and Elias sink away and disappear. This cloud is no other 
than the Shekinah, the symbol of Jehovah's gracious presence 
From the midst of its excellent glory there comes the voice, "Thn 
is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him !" — not 
Moses, nor Elias, nor any other lawgiver, nor any other prophet — but 
"hear ye him." As the apostJes hear that voice, they are sore afraid ; 



332 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 



the strength goes out of them, and they fall with their faces to the 
ground. Jesus conies, touches them. The touch restores their 
strength. He says, "Arise, and be not afraid." They spring up; 
they look around. The voices hava ceased, the forms have van- 
ished, the glory is gone; they are alone with Jesus as at the first. 

Such as we have now recited them were the incidents of the 
transfiguration. Let us consider now its scope and design. In the 
shaded history of the Man of sorrows, this one passage stands out 
so unique — a single outburst of light and glory on the long track of 
darkness — that we look at it with the most intense curiosity ; and as 
we look, the questions start to our lips, Why was it that for that one 
brief season the brow that was to be crowned with thorns was 
crowned with glory, the countenance that was to be marred and spit 
upon shone as the sun, the raiment that was to be stripped off and 
divided among foreign soldiers became so bright and glistering? 
Why was it that he who ere long was to be seen hanging up to die 
between the two malefactors, was now and thus to be seen, with 
Moses and Elias standing by his side paying to him the most pro- 
found obeisance ? W 7 hy did that clouded glory come down and glide 
across the mountain-top, and that voice of the Infinite Majesty speak 
forth its awful and authoritative, yet instructive and encouraging 
words ? In answer to these questions, we must say that we know 
too little of the world of spirits to take it upon us to affirm or con- 
jecture what it was, so far as they personally were concerned, or the 
community of which they formed a part, which biiouglit Moses and 
Elias from their places of abode in the invisible world to stand and 
talk for this short season with Jesus on the mount. Doubtless ~the 
benefit, as the honor, to them was singular and great, involving a 
closer approach to, a nearer fellowship with Jesus in his glorified 
state, than was ever made or enjoyed by any other of our race on 
<?arth, than may be made or enjoyed even by the redeemed in heaven. 
But we venture not to specify or define what the advantage was 
which was thus conferred. We know too little also of the inner his- 
tory of the human mind of the man Christ Jesus, to say how season- 
able, how serviceable this brief translation into the society of the 
upper sanctuary may have been — what treasures of strength and 
comfort fitting him for the approaching hour and power of darkness, 
the solemn announcement of his Sonship by the Father, the declara- 
tion of satisfaction with all his earthly work, may have conveyed into 
his soul. Doubtless here, too, there were purposes of mercy and 
grace towards the Redeemer subserved, which it is difficult for us to 
apprehend, more difficult for us fully to fathom. But there is another 



. 



THE TRANSFIGURATION. 333 

region lying far more open to our inspect'on than either of those now 
indicated. It is not difficult to perceive how the whole scene of the 
transfiguration was ordered so as to fortify and confirm the apostles' 
faith. That it had this as one of jts immediate and more prominent 
objects is evident, from the simple fact that Peter, James, and Jolir* 
were taken up to the mount to witness it. Not for Christ's own sake 
alone, nor for the sake of Moses and Elias alone, but for their sake 
also, was this glimpse of the glorified condition of our Lord afforded ; 
and when we set ourselves deliberately to consider what the obstruc- 
tions were which then lay in the way of a true faith on their part in 
Christ, we can discern how singularly fitted, in its time, its mode, and 
all attendant circumstances, it was to remove these obstructions, and 
establish them in that faith. 

1. It helped them to rise to a true conception of the dignity of 
the Saviour's person. The humbleness of Christ's birth, his social 
estate, the whole outward manner and circumstances of his life cre- 
ated then a prejudice against him and his claims to the Messiahship, 
the force of which it is now difficult to compute : " Can there any 
good thing come out of Nazareth ?" was the question, not of a cap- 
tious scribe or a hostile Pharisee, but of an Israelite indeed, in whom 
there was no guile. " Is not this the carpenter's son ?" was the lan- 
guage of those who had been intimate with him from his birth, when 
they heard him in their synagogue apply the memorable passage in 
the prophecies of Isaiah to himself. "Is not this the carpenter's 
son? is not his mother called Mary, and his brothers, James and 
Joses, and Simon and Judas ; and his sisters, are they not all with 
us ? And they were offended in him." In the case of his own dis- 
ciples, his character, his teaching, his miracles, his life fully satisfied 
them that he was that Prophet who was to be sent. Yet the very 
familiarity of their daily intercourse with him as a man stood in the 
way of their rising to the loftier conception of his divinity. Besides, 
had no such incident as that of the transfiguration occurred in the 
Saviour's history, we can well conceive how at this very stage they 
might have been thrown into a condition of mind and feeling exactly 
the reverse of that of their countrymen at large. Blinded by pride 
and prejudice, the Jews generally w T ould not look at those Scriptures 
which spoke of a suffering, dying Messiah, but fixing their eyes alone 
upon those glowing descriptions given by their prophets of the maj- 
esty of his person and the glory of his reign, they cast aside at one*, 
and indignantly the pretensions of the son of the carpenter. Now, 
for hhe first time, the idea of his suffering unto death was presented 
to the minds of his own disciples. Afterwards they were more fully 



334 THE LIFE OF OHBIST. 

instructed out of the writings of Moses and the prophets how it 
behooved Christ to suffer all these things, and then to enter into his 
glory. But the glory of which so much had been foretold — that 
bright side of the prophetic picture — what was it, and when and how 
was it to be revealed ? Here again, just when their faith was widened 
in one direction, in another it might have begun to falter. To meet 
all the trials of their position, in mercy to all their weaknesses, one 
sight was given of the Lord's transfigured form, one visible manifes- 
tation of the place he held in the invisible kingdom, one glimpse of 
the heavenly glory, with Jesus standing in the midst. Sense stretched 
out its vigorous hand to lay hold of blind and staggering Faith. And 
long afterwards — thirty years and more from the time thai the great 
manifestation was made — in Peter's person, Faith, when she had got 
over all her difficulties, and stood serene, secure, triumphant, looked 
back and owned the debt, and published abroad her obligation, say- 
ing, " We have not followed cunningly-devised fables when we made 
known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but 
were eye-witnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the 
Father honor and glory, when there came such a voice to him from 
the excellent glory, ' This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well 
pleased.' And this voice we heard when we were with Him in the 
holy mount." 

2. The position which Christ assumed toward the Jewish priest- 
hood and the Mosaic ritual was not a little perplexing — his habitual 
neglect of some, his open and severe condemnation of other reli- 
gious observances sanctioned by the highest ecclesiastical authorities, 
regarded generally as of divine origin and authority, and rigorously 
observed by all who made any pretensions to piety. He wore no 
phylacteries ; he made no long prayers ; neither he nor his disciples 
fasted ; he and they ate with unwashed hands ; he sat down with pub- 
licans and sinners ; in many ways, according to the current ideas, he 
and his disciples broke the Sabbath ; he separated himself from the 
priesthood ; he walked not in their ways ; he discountenanced many 
of their practices ; he taught and he practised a religion that made 
but little of holy rites and outward orderly observances. The religion 
of the heart, the home, the secret chamber, the broad highway, the 
solitary mountain-side — a religion that in its heavenward aspects 
opened a way direct for any sinner of our race to God as his heavenly 
Father — that in its earthward aspects found its sphere and occupa- 
tion in the faithful and kindly discharge to all around of the thousand 
nameless duties of human brotherhood — such a religion the scribes, 
the Pharisees, the hierarchy, the whole body of the Jewish priest- 



THE TRANSFIGURATION. 335 

hood, disliked ; they looked askance upon it and upon its author ; 
took up the tale against Jesus — many of them, no doubt, believing it — 
and circulated it, that this man was an enemy of Moses, was ill- 
affected to the law and to the prophets, was an innovator, a revolu- 
tionist. To see and hear their Master thus arraigned, and with 
much apparent reason too, as one throwing himself into a hostile 
attitude towards all the venerated popular superstitions, must have 
been not a little trying to our Lord's apostles. But if there entered 
into their minds a doubt as to the actual inner spiritual harmony 
between their Master's teaching and that of Moses and the prophets, 
the vision on the mount — the sight of Moses and Elias, the founder 
and the restorer, the two chief representatives of the old covenant, 
appearing in glory, entering into such fellowship with Jesus, owning 
him as their Lord — must have cleared it away, satisfying them by an 
ocular demonstration that their Master came not to destroy the law 
and the prophets — not to destroy, but to fulfil. 

3. The manner of Christ's death was, of itself, a huge stumbling- 
block in the way of faith — one over which, notwithstanding all that 
had been done beforehand to prepare them, the apostles at first 
stumbled and fell. And yet one would have thought that the con- 
versation which Peter, James, and John overheard upon the mount, 
might have satisfied them that a mysterious interest hung around 
that death — obscure to the dull eyes of ordinary mortals, but very 
visible to the eyes of the glorified. It formed the one and only topic 
of that sublimest interview, that ever took place on earth. And 
doubtless, when the apostles recovered from the first shock of the 
crucifixion, and, under Christ's and the Spirit's teaching, the meaning 
and object of the great sacrifice for human guilt effected by that 
death revealed itself, and they began to remember all that the Lord 
had told them of it, and the seal of silence that had been put upon 
the lips of Peter, James, and John was broken — when they could not 
only tell that it was about this decease, and about it alone, that Moses 
and Elias had spoken to their Lord, but knew now why it was that it 
formed the only selected topic of discourse — that recalled conversa- 
tion on the holy mount would contribute to fix their eyes in adoring 
gratitude upon the cross, and to open their lips, as they determined 
to know nothing among their fellow-men but Jesus Christ, and him 
crucified. 

4. The peculiar way in which Jesus spake of his relationship to 
God was another great difficulty in the way of faith. It seemed so 
strange, so presumptuous, so blasphemous, for a man, with nothing 
to mark him off as different from other men, to speak of God as his 



336 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Father, not in any figurative or metaphorical, sense, not as any one, 
every one of his creatures might do, but in such a sense as obviously 
to imply oneness of nature, of attributes, of authority, of possession. 
How, against all the counter forces that came into play against it, 
was a faith in his true sonship to the Father to be created and sus- 
tained ? They had his word, his character, his works to build upon. 
But knowing the frailty of that spirit within which the faith had to 
be built up, God was pleased to add another evidence, even that of 
his personal and audible testimony. And so, from that cloudy glory 
which hung for a few moments above the mountain-top, his own 
living voice was heard authenticating all that Jesus had said, or was 
to say, of the peculiar relationship to him in which he stood, " This 
is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear ye him." 

Once before, at the baptism, had the voice of the Father been 
heard uttering the same testimony — confirming the same great fact 
or truth. What more could the Father do than break the silence so 
long preserved, bow the heavens and come down, take into his lips 
one of our human tongues, and in words that men could understand, 
thus twice and so solemnly declare that this Jesus of Nazareth— this 
unique sojourner upon our earth — was no other than his only begot- 
ten, his well- beloved Son, to whom, above all others, we were to open 
our ears — to hear and to believe, to obey and to be blessed? In 
the shape of mere sensible demonstration, could faith ask a higher, 
better proof ? 

What, then, may we not say as we contemplate the single but 
strong help to faith given in this one brilliant passage of our 
Redeemer's life ? What hath God not done to win the faith of the 
human family to Jesus Christ as his Son our Saviour ? If miracles 
of wonder could have done it; if lights seen on earth that were 
kindled before the sun, and forms see-n on earth that had passed into 
the heavens, and the very voice heard on earth that spake and it was 
done, that commanded and all things stood fast, could have done it, 
it had been done long ago. B-ut alas ! for hearts so slow and hard 
as ours, we need Christ to be revealed to us by the Spirit, as well as 
revealed outwardly by the Father, ere to that great saying of his 
upon the mount we make the right response, looking upon Jesus and 
saying, " Truly this is the Son of God — my Lord, my God, my one 
ami only Saviour — with whom I, too, am well pleased, and through 
whom I humbly trust that the Father will be well pleased with me !" 



NOTE. 337 



NOTE. 

Extract from a Journal kept by the Author during 
a Visit to the Holy Land in the $pring of the 
Year 1863. 

Thursday, 23d April.— Our first sight of the Sea of Galilee was from the top 
of Tabor. The next was during our descent this evening to Tiberias from the 
elevated ground around Kurun-Hattin. The climate changed sensibly as we 
descended, and the vegetation altered. We had been under considerable alarm 
as to the suffocating heat Ave were to meet with in Tiberias, and the attacks of 
vermin to which we were to be exposed. Instead of entering the town, or 
encountering the dreaded enemy in his stronghold, where he musters, we are 
told, in great force, we pitched our tents in an airy situation on the banks of the 
lake, where we suffered no annoyance of any kind. How beautiful it was, as the 
sun went down and the stars shone out, to look upon the waters, and to remem- 
ber that they were the waters of the Lake of Galilee. 

Friday, 24th. — A showery night, trying our tents, which stood out well — but 
little rain having got entrance. The day cleared up after breakfast, and at eleven 
o'clock we went on board the boat which we had secured the night before to be 
at our disposal during our stay here. Rowed along the southwestern shores of 
the lake. The hills that rise here from the shore are lofty, some of them twelve 
or thirteen hundred feet high. Landed for a while on a beautiful pebbly beach 
in a little bay, on the shores of which are scattered the ruins of the ancient 
Tarichcea. Within the small enclosure of the bay — less than a quarter of a mile 
across — indenting not more than one hundred yards the general shore-line, Jose* 
phus tells us of more than two hundred vessels being gathered for the only naval 
engagement between the Jews and Romans. What an idea does this present of the 
former populousness of these now silent and almost boatless waters ! Bathed in the 
lake, and lay on the shore gathering shells. Took boat again, and rowed to the 
southern end of the lake, where the Jordan leaves it, and, true to its tortuous 
character, bends right and left as it issues from the lake. Rowed across here, 
and landed on the eastern shore. We had intended making a minute survey of 
the southeastern banks, the general belief having so long been that somewhere 
upon them was the scene of our Lord's cure of the demoniac of Gadara. A care- 
ful inspection of what lay quite open to view at once convinced us that it could 
not have been at any place on the eastern side of the lake south of Wady Fik, 
which lies nearly opposite Tiberias, that the miracle was wrought, for there is no 
steep place whatever at or near the lakeside down which the swine could hava 
run violently. For a long way inland the country is level — never rising to 
any such height as would answer to the description in the gospel narrative. 
There is a Gadara, indeed, in this neighborhood, but it is at a great distance 
from the lake. It would take three hours to reach it, and the gorge of the river 
Jermak intervenes. It cannot have been the Gadara near to which the tombs 
were, out of which the inhabitants came immediately on hearing what had hap- 
pened on the lakeside. A single look at Kurbit-es-Sumrah (Hippos) must satisfy 

Ufe »! Chris* 22 



338 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

every observer that it could not possibly have been there, nor anywheie in its 
immediate neighborhood, that the incidents occurred connected with the healing 
of the demoniac. We rowed back in the evening to our tents, thoroughly satis- 
fied that in this instance the existence of a place called Gadara lying south of the 
lake had exercised a misleading influence. It remained for us to examine the 
eastern side of the lake, above the point at which we now left it. This we 
resolved to do next day. . . . 

Saturday, 25th. — Rowed across to Wady Fik, the first place along the eastern 
6hore coming up from the south at which the miracle could have been performed. 
On landing, we asked our boatmen whether there were any tombs in the wady. 
Their answer was to point us to a very old burying-ground, scarcely a hundred 
yards from the place where we landed, which told its own story by the stones 
scattered over it. We scarcely needed to ask whether there were any remains of 
towns or villages near ; for, looking to our right, on the slope of a hill about 
quarter of a mile off, the ruins of a village were to be seen — a very old village our 
guide told us it was — its name, as he pronounced it, Kurban, or Dharban, or 
Goorban, we could not exactly say which. Immediately fronting us was a lotty 
conical height, with the steepest line of descent we had yet seen. This height 
was connected by a narrow shoulder of land with the line of hills behind, which 
here decline so rapidly to the shore, that either along their sides, or down the 
still steeper side of the semi-detached and conical eminence in the mouth of the 
wady, the swine may have run. There is indeed a level space, of no great extent, 
however, between the shore and the bottom of the hills and of this eminence, but 
it might easily have been that under the impulse of the demoniac possession, and 
urged by the impetus given in so long and rapid a descent, the swine might have 
been hurried across the space into the water. There is, in fact, no steep place 
along the whole eastern shore which runs sheer down into the water. Here, then, 
in Wady Fik we had enough to satisfy all the requirements of the narrative : 
tombs so placed that immediately on Christ's landing a man might have come 
out of them ; a mountain near, on which two thousand swine might have been 
feeding ; a height down which they might have run so violently as to be driven 
into the sea ; and a village at hand to which the tidings might easily be carried. 
It remained for us, however, to visit Wady Semakh — the site fixed on by Dr. 
Thompson as the scene of the event. Here, too, more than one of the conditions 
required by the narrative were fully met : on the hillside, to the right of the 
valley, were caves used formerly as tombs ; between us and them, as we stood 
upon the shore, were the remains of an old village, while away at a considerable 
distance on our right was a slope of a mountain-side that might have served for 
the descent. The tombs, however, were too far off. Their position relative to 
the village scarcely corresponded with the narrative, from which one would nat- 
urally infer that the village lay behind — the word needing to be carried to it. 

On the whole, after the fairest and fullest comparison we could institute, our 
decision was that it was in Wady Fik, and not in Wady Semakh, that the inci- 
dents of the strange healing occurred. * 

The closer survey, however, that we were now able to make of Wady Semakh, 
strengthened the impression that eye and glass had conveyed to us — as from the 
other side we had studied the eastern shores of the lake — that it was in its neigb- 

* See " Sinai and Palestine," p. 380 



NOTE. 339 

borhood that the feeding of the five thousand took place. Let any one run his 
eye from the entrance of the Jordan into the lake, down the eastern shore, and 
he will notice that all along the land rises with a gentle and gradual slope ; never 
till miles behind rising into any thing that could be called a mountain ; never 
showing any single height with a marked distinction from or elevation above the 
others, so separate and so secluded that it could with propriety be said that Jesus 
went up to that mountain apart to pray. Wherever Capernaum was, to pass over 
from it to these slopes on the northeastern shore traditionally regarded as the 
scene of the miracle, could scarcely be said to be a crossing over to the other side 
of the lake. But Wady Semakh presents the very kind of place required by tha 
record of the events. Looking up into it, with high mountains on either side, 
with lesser valleys dividing them from one another, presenting a choice to any 
one who sought an elevated privacy on a mountain-top for prayer — and turning 
our eye upon the many plateaux or nearly level places, carpeted at this season of 
the year with grass, my companion, Dr. Keith Johnson, and I were both per- 
suaded that our eyes were resting on the neighborhood where the great and 
gracious display of the Divine power was made in the feeding of the multitude. 



340 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 

The first part of this Study covers some of the most important 
experiences which in their application by Christ were adapted to teach 
the apostles humility. Their failure to cure the lunatic boy proved 
how powerless they were without the guidance and strength which 
came from their Master; and their strife among themselves as to who 
should be chief called forth the instruction which showed them how far 
they were from being meek and lowly in heart. 

In the latter part of the lesson the twelve see their Lord beginning 
his last wonderful occasions of witnessing to the national leaders at 
Jerusalem. 

PART III. MAIN MINISTRY IN JUDEA AND PER^A. 

Study 11. Lessons Culminating at the Feast of Tabernacles. 

(1) Christ enjoins silence on the three apostles as to the transfigu- 

ration 341 

(2) He answers their question as to the coming of Elijah 342, 343 

(3) The healing of the lunatic boy 343-349 

a. Failure of the apostles to effect a cure 343, 344 

b. Christ's prehminary steps and success 344-347 

c. Lessons of the experience 347-349 

(4) Method of Christ's payment of the tribute money 350-353 

(5) Strife of apostles as to who should be greatest 353-357 

a. Mistaken and selfish views of the twelve , . 353, 354 

6. Precepts and ideals of the Master 355-357 

(6) Christ's custom and spirit as to religious observances 357-364 

a. Striking absence of common details of Christ in the Gospels 357-359 

b. This applies also largely to his religious habits 359, 3G0 

c. During eighteen months' work in Galilee he has probably not attended 

at Jerusalem two Pentecosts, one Passover, and one feast of 
Tabernacles . 360 

d. Questions which his practice doubtless raised 360, 361 

e. Suggestions of his brethren that he go into Judea 362, 363 

/. Jesus' decision shaped by his mission 362-364 

(7) Christ at the feast of Tabernacles 365-381 

a. The civil, social, and religious value of the three national feasts 365 

b. Christ goes up secretly and appears in the temple 366 

c. He challenges attention by his teaching 366-369 

d. He promises the water of life 370-373 

e. He offers himself as the light of the world 373-381 



THE CLOSE OF THE MINISTRY. 



I. 

The Descent from the Mount of Transfiguration,* 

Mokning has dawned upon the mountain-top which had witnessed 
the wonderful night-scene of the transfiguration. Jesus and the three 
disciples begin to descend. The silence they at first observe is broken 
by our Lord turning to his disciples, and saying, " Tell the vision to no 
man, until the Son of man be risen again from the dead." A few days 
before, Jesus had straitly charged them that they should tell no man 
that he was the Christ. The discovery would be premature. The 
people were not prepared for it. It would come unsuitably as well 
as unseasonably from the lips of the apostles. It might serve to 
interrupt that course of things which was to guide onward to the 
great decease to be accomplished at Jerusalem. And whatever 
reasons there were for a temporary concealment from the multitude 
of such knowledge as to their Master's true character and office as 
the apostles possessed, still stronger reasons were there that they 
should preserve silence as to this vision on the mount, the narration 
of which would be sure at that time to provoke nothing but derision. 
Not even to the other nine were the three to speak of it till the key 
to its true interpretation was in all their hands, for even by them, in 
the meantime, it was little likely to be rightly apprehended, and it 
was not a topic to be rudely handled as a thing of idle and ignorant 
talk. The seal thus put upon the lips of the three, we have no reason 
to believe was broken till the time came when they stood relieved 
from the obligation it imposed. All the more curiously would the 
matter be scanned by the three when alone. The thing that most 
perplexed them as they did so, was what the rising from the dead 
could mean. They did not venture to put any question to their 
Master. Now, upon the mountain-side, as afterwards, they were 
afraid to ask him about it, with something perhaps of the feeling of 
those who do not like to ask more about a matter which it has sad- 
* Matt. 17 : 9-27 ; Mark 9 :9-32 ; Luke 9 : 37-45. 



342 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

dened them so much to hear about at all ; from all fuller and diV 
tincter sight of which they shrink. 

But there was a question, and that a very natural one in the 
existing circumstances, which they did venture to put to Jesus by 
the way. They had just seen Elias standing by the side of theii 
Master, to be with him in that brief interview, and then depart. Was 
this that coming of the great prophet about which the scribes spoke 
so much ? It could scarcely be so, for that coming was to precede 
the advent of the Messiah. But if Jesus were the Christ, and this 
which they had just witnessed were the coming of Elias, the pre- 
scribed prophetic order would be reversed. In the uncertainty and 
confusion of their thoughts they put the question to their Master, 
"Why say the scribes that Elias must first come?" Jesus had 
already — months before — on the occasion of the visit of the two dis- 
ciples of the Baptist, said to them plainly enough, " If ye will receive 
it, this is Elias which was to come." They had not fully understood or 
received it. In common with the whole body of their countrymen, 
their original idea had been, that it was to be an actual return of 
Elijah himself to the earth which was to be the precursor of the 
appearance of their Messiah. This conception the sayings of Jesus 
may have served partially to rectify; but now, when Elijah comes 
and presents himself before their eyes, it returns, and in returning 
blinds and confuses them once more. Our Lord's answer is so far clear 
enough, that he confirms the dictum of the scribes as founded on a 
right reading of the ancient prophecies, especially of the one by 
Malachi, recorded in the fourth chapter of that prophet's writings. 
It was true, what these scribes had said, that Elias must first come. 
But they were in error when they looked for a personal visit from the 
old prophet as the precursor of the first advent of Christ. They had 
failed to eee in the person and ministry of John one coming in the 
spirit and power of Elias. They had taken too hastily the Baptist 
at his word when he said he was not Elias, as in a literal sense he 
was not. And, misapprehending his character and mission, they had 
allowed their natural dislike to such a person and ministry as his to 
grow until it culminated in that act of Herod by which the disliked 
preacher of righteousness was cut off. Once more, therefore, does 
Jesus renew the testimony he had already borne to the Baptist : " I 
say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, 
but have done unto him whatsoever they listed." The treatment 
they gave to the forerunner was no inapt symbol of that which they 
were preparing for Christ himself, for " likewise shall also the Sou of 
man suffer of them." 



DESCENT FROM THE MOUNT. 343 

Then the disciples understood that " he spake unto them of John 
the Baptist." But did they understand that in his answer to their 
inquiry our Lord alluded to another, a future coming of Elias, of 
which that of the Baptist was but a type or a prelude, as well as to 
another, a future coming of the Son of man with which it was to be 
connected? Many think that not obscurely, such an allusion lay 
in the words which Christ employed, and that it is in the two advents 
each prefaced with its appropriate precursorage, that the full and 
varied language of ancient prophecy receives alone its fit and ade- 
quate accomplishment. 

But we must now turn our eye from the little group conversing 
about EJias, as they descended the hillside, to what was occurring 
elsewhere, down in the valley, among the villages that lay at the base 
of the mountain. Among the villagers there had occurred a case of 
rare and complicated distress. A youth, the only son of his father, 
had fallen the victim to strange and fearful paroxysms, in which his 
own proper speech was taken from him, and he uttered hideous 
sounds, and foamed, and gnashed with his teeth, and was cast some- 
times into the fire, and sometimes into the water, from which he was 
drawn with difficulty, half dead. To bodily and mental distemper, 
occult and incurable, there was added demoniac possession, mingling 
itself with, and adding new horrors to, the terrible visitations. With 
the arrival of Christ and his disciples in this remote region, there had 
come the fame of the wonderful cures that he had elsewhere effected ; 
cures, many of them, of the very same kind of malady with which this 
youth was so grievously afflicted. On learning that the company of 
Galilean strangers had arrived in the neighborhood of his own dwell- 
ing, the father of this youth thought that the time had come of relief 
from that heavy domestic burden that for years he had been bearing. 
He brought to them his son. Unfortunately, it so happened that he 
brought him when Christ and his three disciples were up in the moun- 
tain, and the nine were left behind. It was to them, therefore, that 
the application for relief was made. It does not appear that when in 
company with Christ the disciples were in the habit of claiming or 
exercising any preternatural power over disease. No case, at least, 
of a cure effected by their hands in such circumstances is recorded. 
But in that short, experimental tour, when they had been sent out away 
from him to go two by two through Galilee, Jesus had given them 
power over unclean spirits — a power which they had exercised with- 
out check or failure. And now, when they are left alone, and this most 
painful case is brought to them, they imagine that the same power is 
in their hands, and they essay to exercise it. In their Master's name 



314 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

again and again they command that unclean spirit to go forth, but 
their words return to them void. They stand baffled and covered 
with confusion before the crowd that had gathered to witness the 
cure. They can give no reason, for they know none, why the failure 
has taken place. Nor are they suffered to skulk away in their defeat 
Some scribes are there, ready enough to take advantage of the awk- 
ward dilemma into which they have been thrown by assuming an 
authority which turns out to be impotent — their Master's character 
involved in their defeat. We can well imagine what an instrument 
of reproach would be put thus into the hands of these scribes, and 
how diligently and effectively they would employ it ; pressing the dis- 
ciples with questions to which they could give no satisfactory replies, 
and turning the whole occurrence to the best account in the way oi 
casting discredit upon the Master, as well as upon his disciples. A 
great multitude had in the meantime assembled ; a profane and scof- 
fing and half-malignant spirit had been stealing into the hearts of many, 
when Jesus and the three are seen coming down from the hillside. 
The suddenness of his appearance — his coming at the very time that 
his disciples were hard pressed, perhaps, too, the very calmness and 
majesty of his appearance, as some of that glory of the mountain-top 
still lingers around him — produces a quick revolution of feeling in the 
fickle multitude. Straightway a kind of awe — half admiration, hali 
alarm — comes over them, and, "greatly amazed," they leave the 
scribes and the discomfited disciples, and they run to him and salute 
him — not in mockery, certainly, or hailing him as one whose claims 
upon their homage they are ready to set aside — but rather with a 
rebound from their recent incredulity, prepared to pay to him the pro- 
founder respect. And now, as on some battlefield which subordinate 
officers have entered in absence of their chief, and in which they have 
been worsted by the foe, at the crisis of the day the chief himself 
appears, and at once the tide of battle turns — so acts the presence of 
Christ. Bearing back with him the multitude that had run forth to 
greet him, he comes up to where the scribes are dealing with the 
apostles, and says to them, " What question ye with them ?" The 
questioners are struck dumb — stand silent before the Lord. In the 
midst of the silence a man comes forward, kneels down before Jesus, 
tells him what has happened, how fearful the malady was that had 
fallen upon his only child, how he had brought the child to the dis 
ciples and they had failed to cast the devil out of him. Too much 
occupied with his own grief, too eager to seize the chance now given, 
that the Master may do what his disciples could not, he makes no 
mention of the scribes, or of the hostile feeling against him they have 



DESCENT FROM THE MOUNT. 345 

been attempting to excite. But Jesus knows it all, sees how iu all the 
various regions then around him, in the hearts of the people who 
speak to him, in the hearts of the disciples from whom he had tem- 
porarily been parted, in the hearts of those scribes who had been 
indulging in an unworthy and premature triumph, the spirit of incre- 
clulity had been acting. Contemplating the sad picture of prevailing 
unbelief, there bursts from his lips the mournful ejaculation, ' O faith- 
less, incredulous, and perverse generation ! how long shall I be with 
you and you remain ignorant of who and what I am ? How shall I 
suffer you, as you continue to exhibit such want of trust in my willing- 
ness and power to help and save you ?' Not often does Christ give us 
any insight into the personal emotions stirred up within his heart by 
the scenes among which he moves — not often does there issue from 
his lips any thing approaching to complaint. Here, for a moment, 
out of the fulness of his heart he speaketh, revealing as he does so 
a fountain-head of sorrow lying deep within his soul, the fulness and 
bitterness of whose waters, as they were so constantly rising up to 
flood and overflow his spirit, who can gauge ? What must it have 
been for Jesus Christ to come into such close familiar contact with 
the misconceptions and incredulities, and dislikes and oppositions of 
the men he lived among ? With a human nature like our own, yet 
far more exquisitely sensitive than ours to injustice and false reproach, 
what a constant strain and burden must thus have been laid upon his 
heart ! What an incalculable amount of patience must it have called 
him to exercise ! 

The brief lament over the faithless and perverse generation 
uttered, Jesus says to the father, " Bring thy son hither!" And now 
follows a scene to which there are few parallels in scriptural or in any 
other story, for our vivid conception of which we are specially indebted 
to the graphic pen of the second evangelist. They go for the youth, 
and bring him. So soon as he comes into the presence of Jesus, and 
their eyes meet — whether it was that the calm, benignant, heavenly 
lo< )k of Christ operated as a kind of stimulant upon a wornout, weak, 
unstrung, excitable, nervous system, or that the devil, knowing that 
his time was short, would raise one last and vehement commotion 
within that poor distracted frame — the youth falls to the ground, wal- 
lowing, foaming, torn by a power he is unable to resist. Jesus looks 
upon him as he lies, and all who are around look at Jesus, wondering 
what he will do. Is it easy to imagine a conjunction of outward cir- 
cumstances more striking or affecting? The youth writhing on the 
ground, Jesus bending on him a look of ineffable pity, the father 
standing on tlie tiptoe of eager expectation, the disciples, the scribes, 






CI 

; 



346 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

the multitude pressing on to witness the result. Such was the sea- 
son, such were the circumstances that Jesus chose for one of the 
shortest but most memorable of his conversations. Before he says 
or does any thing as to the son, he says quietly, inquiringly, compas- 
sionately to the father, " How long is it ago since this came unto 
him?" The father tells how long, and tells how terrible it has been; 
but as if somewhat impatient at such a question being put at such a 
time, he adds, "But if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on 
us, and help us." Genuine and pathetic utterance of a deep-smitten 
fatherly affection, identifying itself with the object of its love, and 
intent upon the one thing of getting that child cured ; all right her 
in the father's feeling towards his son; but something wrong, some 
thing defective in the feeling towards Christ which, for the man' 
own sake and for his son's sake, and for the sake of that gathered 
crowd, and for the sake of us, and of all who shall ever read this nar- 
rative, Jesus desired to seize upon this opportunity to correct. " If 
thou canst do any thing," the father says. " If thou canst believe," 
is our Lord's quick reply. ' It is not, as thou takest it, a question as 
to the extent of my power, but altogether of the strength of thy faith ; 
for if thou canst but believe, all things are possible, this thing can 
easily be done.' Receiving the rebuke in the spirit in which it was 
given, awaking at once to see and believe that it was his want of faith 
that stood in the way of his son's cure, sensible that he had been 
wrong in challenging Christ's power, that Christ was right in chal- 
lenging his faith, with a flood of tears that told how truly humble and 
broken his spirit was, the man cries out, " Lord, I believe ; help thou 
mine unbelief." Who is not grateful to the man who lets us see into 
that tumult and agony of soul in which true faith is born — how it is 
that out of the dull and fearful spirit of mistrust the genuine, child- 
like confidence of the heart in Jesus struggles into being. " Lord, I 
believe." ' I have a trust in thee. I know that thou hast all power 
at thy command, and canst exercise it as thou wilt. But when I look 
at that which this power of thine is now called to do, my faith begins 
to falter. Lord, help mine unbelief. Thou only canst do it. Thou 
only canst strengthen this weak and failing heart of mine. It is thine 
to cure the bodily distemper of my son. It is thine to heal the spir- 
itual infirmities of my soul.' What a mixture here of weakness and 
strength — the cry for help betraying the one, yet in that very cry 
the other standing revealed ! Few utterances that have come from 
human lips have carried more in them of the spirit that we should 
all seek to cherish; nor would it be easy to calculate how many 
human beings have taken up the language this man taught them 

j 






DESCENT FROM THE MOUNT. 347 

to employ, and said to Jesus, "Lord, we believe; help thou oui 

unbelief." 

In answer to this confession and this prayer, something still fur- 
ther might have been said, had not our Lord perceived a fresh pres- 
sire in upon them of the neighboring crowd, at sight of which he 
delayed no longer, but turning to him who still lies on the ground 
before him, in words of sternness and decision he says, " Thou dumb 
and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more 
into him "!" A fresh cry of agony, a last and most violent convulsion, 
and the poor afflicted youth lies stretched out so motionless that 
many, looking at him, say that he is dead. But Jesus takes him by 
the hand and lifts him up, and delivers him perfectly cured to his 
glad and grateful father. The work was done ; the crowd dispersed, 
" all amazed at the mighty power of God." 

Afterwards, when alone with him in the house, the apostles asked 
Jesus why it was that they could not cast the devil out. He told 
them that it was because of their unbelief. They had suffered per- 
haps that late announcement which he had made to them of his 
impending sufferings and death to dim or disturb their faith, or they 
had allowed that still more recent selection of the three, and his with- 
drawal from them up into the mountain, to engender a jealousy which 
weakened that faith. One way or other, their faith had given way, 
and in its absence they had tried the power of their Master's name, 
in the hope that it might act as a charm or talisman. Jesus would 
have them know that it was not thus that his name was rightly, or 
could ever effectively, be employed. Yet at the same time he would 
have them know that the kind of spirit by which this youth had 
been possessed was one not easy of ejection — which required, in fact, 
on the part of the ejector, such a faith as could only be reached by 
much prayer and fasting; teaching them thus, in answer to their 
inquiry, the double lesson — that the primary source of their failure 
lay in the defect of their faith ; and that the manner in which that 
faith could alone be nourished up to the required degree of strength 
was by fasting and by prayer ; by weaning themselves from the pur- 
suits and enjoyments of sense ; by repeated and earnest supplications 
to the Giver of every good and perfect gift, whose office it is to work 
in his people the work of faith with power. At the same time Jesus 
took the opportunity which this private interview with his disciples 
afforded — as he had taken the opportunity of his interview with the 
importunate father — to proclaim the great power, the omnipotence of 
faith. Matt. 17 : 20. This obviously was the one great lesson which, 
in this passage of his earthly history, Jesus designed to teach. 



348 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Sudden and very striking must have been the transition from the 
brightness, the blessedness of that sublime communion with Moses 
and Elias on the mount, to the close contact with human misery in 
the shape of the possessed lunatic w T ho lay writhing at his feet; so 
sharp and impressive the contrast that the prince of painters, in his 
attempt to picture to our eye the glories of the transfiguration, has 
thrown in the figure of the suffering child at the base of the moun- 
tain. But more even than by this contact with human misery does 
our Saviour seem on this occasion to have been impressed by his 
coming into such close contact with so many forms of human unbe- 
lief. And he appears to have framed and selected this as the first 
occasion on which to announce, not only the need and the benefit, 
but the illimitable power of faith. 

He could easily have arranged it so that no application had been 
made to his disciples in his absence, but then they had wanted the 
lesson the failure carried in its bosom. He could easily have cured 
that maniac boy at once and by a word ; but then his father had 
missed that lesson which, in the short preliminary conversation with 
him, was conveyed. And through both, to us and to all, the great 
truth is made known that in this world of sin and sorrow the prime 
necessity is, that we should have faith in God and faith in Jesus 
Christ — not in certain truths or propositions about God or about 
Jesus Christ — but simple, childlike trust in God as our Father, in 
Jesus as our Saviour; a faith that will lead us in all times of our 
weakness and exposure, and temptation and distress, to fly to them 
to succor us, casting ourselves, upon a help that never was refused to 
those who felt their need of it. Neither for our natural nor for our 
spiritual life is the physical removal of mountains necessary ; if it 
were, we believe that it would be given in answer to believing prayer ; 
but mountains of difficulty there are, moral and spiritual, which do 
need to be removed ere our way be made plain, and we be carried 
smoothly and j^rosperously along it ; corruptions within us to be sub- 
dued ; temptations without us to be overcome. These must be met, 
and struggled with, and overcome. It is by the might and mastery 
of faith and prayer that this can alone be accomplished. And it is 
no small comfort for us to be assured, on the word of our Lord him- 
self, that though our faith be small in bulk as the mustard-seed, yet 
if it be genuine — if it humbly yet firmly take hold of the mighty 
power of God and hang upon it, it will avail to bring that power 
down to our aid and rescue; so that, weak as we are in ourselves, 
and strong as the world is to overcome us, yet greater shall he be 
that is with us than he that is in the world, and we shall be able to 



DESCENT FROM THE MOUNT. 349 

cb all things through Him who strengthened us. Prayer, it has 
been said, moves the arm that moves the universe. But it is faith 
which gives to prayer the faculty of linking itself in this way with 
Omnipotence, and calling it to human aid. And so you find that, in one 
of the other two instances in which Jesus made use of the same expres 
sions as to the power of faith which he employed upon this occasion, 
he coupled faith and prayer together. " Master," said Peter, won- 
dering at the effect which a single word of Jesus had produced — 
" Master, behold, the fig-tree which thou cursedst is withered away ! 
And Jesus answering said unto them, Have faith in God. For verily 
I say unto you, that whosoever shall say to this mountain, Be thou 
removed, and be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in his 
heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come 
to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto 
you, What things soever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye 
receive them, and ye shall have them." Wonderful words, assigning 
an all-embracing, an absolutely unlimited efficacy to faith and prayer — 
words not to be lightly judged of, as if they were intended to encour- 
age the rash and ignorant conceits and confidences of a presump- 
tuous enthusiasm, but words of truth and soberness, notwithstanding 
the width and compass of their embrace, if only we remember that 
true faith will confide in God or Christ only for that as to which he 
invites, and so warrants, its confidence ; and true prayer will ask for 
that alone which is agreeable to the will of God, and will promote the 
spiritual and eternal good of him upon whom it is bestowed. These 
are the conditions — natural and reasonable — which underlie all that 
Christ has said of the power of faith and prayer. And within these 
conditions we accept all that he has said as true in itself, and wanting 
only a firmer faith, and a more undoubting prayer than we have exer- 
cised or put forth, to receive its fulfilment in our own experience. 



350 THE LIFE OF CHRIST, 



II. 

The Payment of the Tribute-money — The Strife A3 
to Who should be Greatest in the Kingdom op 
Heaven.* 

From his retirement in the neighborhood of Caesarea-Philippi, 
Jesus returned to Galilee — not, however, to resume his public minis- 
try there. He sought privacy now, even among the scenes of his 
former labors — a privacy that he wished to consecrate to the further 
enlightenment of the twelve as to his own character and office, and the 
true nature of the kingdom he came to institute. Mark 9 : 30, 31. 
It was in fulfilment of this purpose that, on the way from the scene 
of the transfiguration to his old haunts about Capernaum, he made a 
second announcement of his impending death and resurrection, add- 
ing to the details of his passion formerly given that of his betrayal. 
So hid was the meaning of Christ's words, that all that the apostles 
appear to have derived from them was, a vague impression that some 
great and decisive events in their Master's history were drawing near, 
in contemplation of which they began disputing among themselves 
which should be greatest in the kingdom which they hoped to see so 
soon set up — keeping, as they imagined, their disputings about this 
topic concealed from Christ. 

On their arrival at Capernaum, the persons appointed to receive 
the annual tribute which was paid for the support of the temple ser- 
vices came to Peter and said to him, " Doth not your Master pay 
tribute?" Those who put this question were not the publicans or 
ordinary tax-gatherers, who levied the dues laid upon the Jews by 
their governors the Eomans. Nor was the question one about the 
payment of any common tax, any civil impost. The very form of the 
question, had it been literally rendered, would have indicated this — 
'Doth not your Master pay the didrachma?' a coin then modern and 
in circulation, equivalent to the old half-shekel, which, having gone 
out of use, had become rare. Every Jew of twenty years old and 
upward was required to give a half-shekel yearly for the maintenance, 
first of the tabernacle, and afterwards of the temple. Although this 
payment was legally imposed, it does not appear to have been enforced 
by civil pains or penalties. It was left rather, like other of the Mo- 
saic imposts, to the spontaneous action of conscience and a good- will 
towards the theocracy on the part of the people. It was to the pay- 
• Matt. 17 : 22-27; 18 : 1-35 ; Mark 9 : 33-41 ; Luke 9 : 43-50. 



PAYMENT OF THE TRIBUTE-MONEY. 351 

ment of this didraclima or half-shekel for the upholding of the temple 
and its ordinances that the question put to St. Peter refers. It is 
impossible for us to say positively in what spirit or with what motives 
the question was put. It certainly was not the question of the lynx- 
eyed collectors of the ordinary revenue, detecting an attempted eva- 
sion of the payment of one or other of the common taxes. From no 
civil obligation laid upon him by law did Jesus ever claim to be 
exempt ; nor would the argument which he used afterwards with the 
apostle, embodying a claim to exemption in this case, have been 
applicable to any such obligation. But why did those to whom the 
gatherers of this ecclesiastical impost was intrusted speak as they did 
to St. Peter ? Was it from doubt or ignorance on their part as to 
whether Jesus ought to be asked or now meant to pay this tax? 
Priests, Levites, prophets, some tell us that even rabbis were held to 
be free from this payment. Had Christ's retirement now from pub- 
lic duty suggested the idea that he had thrown aside that character 
under which immunity might have been claimed by him, and that he 
might be called upon therefore to submit to all the ordinary obliga- 
tions under which every common inhabitant of the country was laid ? 
Or was this a piece of rude impertinence on the part of the under- 
officials of the hierarchy, who, seeing the disfavor into which Jesus 
had sunk with their superiors, were quick to take advantage of their 
commission to obtrude a question that seemed to cast some reproach 
on Christ as if he were a defaulter ? Some color is given to the sup- 
position that it was in a sinister spirit that the inquiry was made, 
from the circumstance of St. Peter's prompt reply — a reply in which 
there may have been indignation at an implied suspicion, and a scorn 
at disputing about such a trifle — so that without any communication 
with Jesus, he shuts the mouths of these gainsayers by saying, ' Yes, 
his Master paid, or would pay, the tribute.' Had the tone in which 
the question was asked and the apostle's reply was given been known 
to us, we might have told whether it was so or not. As it is, it can 
only be a conjecture that it was in a hostile and malicious spirit that 
the collectors of the tribute-money acted. Peter, however, was too 
rash and hasty. It might be true enough that his Master had no 
desire to avoid that or any other service which he owed to the tem- 
ple and to its worship. It might be safe enough in him to undertake 
for his Master so trifling a payment, which, whether Jesus acqui- 
esced in the engagement or not, the apostle could easily find the 
means for meeting. But in such an instant acknowledgment of the 
obligation, there was an overlooking on Peter's part of the dignity of 
Christ's person, and of his position towards the temple. To remind 



352 THE LIFE OF CH'RIST. 

him of this oversight, to recall his attention to what was implied lis 
his own recent confession at Ca3sarea-Philippi, when they were come 
into the house, without waiting for any communication from Peter as 
to what had occurred, Jesus said to him, "What thinkest thou, Simon? 
of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their 
own children, or of strangers ?" — those who are not members of their 
own family — not sons, but subjects. Peter saith to him, ' Of the lat- 
ter; of strangers. Jesus saith to him, Then are the children free.' 
Upon this simple principle Christ would have Peter to recognize his 
immunity from that tribute which was now claimed — for was he not 
greater than the temple ? Did he not bear to that temple the rela- 
tion of the Son in the house of his Father ? And did he not as such 
stand free from all the obligations which the King and Lord of that 
house had laid upon his servants — his subjects ? It will not be easy 
to show any pertinence assumed in the plea for immunity thus pre- 
sented, without admitting the altogether peculiar relationship in 
which Christ stood to the Father. Accept the truth of his divine 
Sonship to the Father, and the plea holds good ; reject that truth, 
and the plea seems weak and void. And was it not for the purpose 
of still further illustrating that very Sonship to God which Peter for 
the moment had forgotten, that our Lord directed him to do that 
which in the issue carried with it so remarkable a proof that in the 
great temple of the visible creation Jesus was not a servant, but a 
Son ; that everywhere within and over that house he ruled ; that all 
things there were ready to serve him — the flowers of the field, the 
birds of the air, the fish of the sea — seeing that at Christ's bidding 
one of the latter was to be ready to grasp at Peter's hook, and on 
being taken up, was to have in its mouth the stater, the fouv-drachm 
piece, the very sum required from two persons for the yearly ternple- 
tax? It is as viewed in this connection that a miracle which other- 
wise would look needless and undignified — out of keeping with the 
general character of our Lord's great works, all of which in some 
way have something more than mere exhibiting of power — takes 
rank with all the rest as illustrative of the higher character and office 
of the Eedeemer. It was not want which forced our Lord upon this 
forthputting of his divinity. Even had the bag which Judas carried 
been for the moment empty, the sum required to meet this payment 
was not so large but that it could easily have been otherwise pro- 
cured; but in the manner in which the need was met, Jesus would 
set forth that character on the ground of which he might have claimed 
immunity — throwing over the depths of his earthly poverty the glory 
of his divine riches, and making it manifest how easy it had been for 



L 



PAYMENT OF THE TRIBUTE-MONEY. 353 

Aim to have laid all nature under contribution to supply all his wants. 
Yet another purpose was served by this incident in our Saviour's life. 
In point of time, it harmonizes with the first occasions on which Jesus 
began to speak of that church, that separate society which was to 
spring forth out of the bosom of Judaism, and to take the place of 
the old theocracy. Had he, without explanation made, at once rati- 
fied the engagement that Peter made for him, it might have been 
interpreted as an acknowledgment of his subjection to the customs 
and laws of the old covenant. That no offence might be taken — 
taken in ignorance by those who were ignorant of the ground upon 
which immunity from this payment on his part might have been 
asserted — he was willing to do as Peter said he would. In this it 
became him to fulfil all the righteousness of the law; but even in 
doing so, he will utter in private his protest, and in the mode wherein 
that protest is embodied convey beforehand no indistinct intimation 
that a breach was to take place between the temple-service and the 
new community of the free of which he was to be the Head. 

It is extremely difficult to determine what the exact order of events 
was on the arrival at Capernaum. If it were while they were on the 
way to the house — most likely that of Peter, in which Jesus took up 
his abode — that the collectors of the temple tax made their applica- 
tion, then the first incident after the arrival would be the short con- 
versation Avith Simon, and the despatching him to obtain the stater 
from the fish's mouth upon the lake. In Peter's absence, and after 
they had entered the house, Jesus may have said to his disciples, 
" What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way ?" They 
were so struck by surprise, had been so certain that their Master had 
not overheard the dispute that had taken place, that they had no 
answer to give to his inquiry. Meanwhile, Peter has returned from 
his errand, and reported its result, while they in turn report to him 
the inquiry that had been made of them. Let us remember here 
that up to the time of the arrival in the neighborhood of Caasarea- 
Philippi, no instance is on record of any controversy having arisen 
among the personal attendants on Christ as to the different positions 
they were to occupy in his kingdom. All had hitherto been so vague 
and indefinite as to the time and manner of the institution of the 
kingdom, that all conjecture or anticipation as to their relative place* 
therein had been kept in abeyance. Now, however, . they see a new 
tone and manner in their Master. He speaks of things — they do not 
well know what — which are about to occur in Jerusalem. He tells 
them that there were some of them standing there before him whicb 
should not taste of death till they had seen the kingdom of God 

Ufa ef ThrUt 23 



354 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Which of them could it be for whom such honor was in reserve ? He 
takes Peter and James and John up with him to the mount, and 
appears there before them in so new an aspect, invested with such a 
strange and exceeding glory, that the privilege of being present at 
such a spectacle must have appeared to the three as a singular dis- 
tinction conferred upon them. They were not to tell the others what 
they had seen, but they could scarcely fail to tell them they had seen 
something wonderful beyond any thing that had happened in their 
Lord's wonderful life, which they were not permitted to reveal. 
Would not the seal of secrecy so imposed enhance in their estima- 
tion the privilege which had been conferred on them, and would it 
not in the same degree be apt to awaken a jealousy on the part of 
the nine ? At the very time, then, that they all began to look out for 
the coming of the kingdom as near at hand, by the materials thus 
supplied for pride with some, for envy with the rest, an apple of dis- 
cord was thrown in among the twelve. They were but men of like 
passions with ourselves. They had as yet no other notion of the 
kingdom that was shortly to appear than that it would be a temporal 
one; that their Master was to become a powerful and victorious 
prince, with places, honors, wealth, at his command. And what more 
natural than that they whom he had chosen to be confidential attend- 
ants in the days of his humiliation should be then signally exalted 
and rewarded ? Such being their common expectations, any mark of 
partiality on Christ's part would be particularly noted ; and what 
more natural than that such a signal one as that bestowed upon the 
three, in their being chosen as the only witnesses of the transfigura- 
tion, should have stirred up the strife by the way as to who should 
be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven ? 

This first outbreak of selfishness and pride and ambition and' envy 
and strife, among his chosen companions, was a great occasion in the 
sight of Jesus. It might and it did spring to a large extent from 
ignorance, and, with the removal of that ignorance, might be sub- 
dued ; but it might and it did spring from sources which, after fullest 
knowledge had been conveyed of what the kingdom was and where- 
in its distinctions lay, might still have power to flood the church with 
a whole host of evils. Therefore it was that Jesus would signalize 
this occasion by words and an act of particular impressiveness. 
Peter had returned from the lakeside with the stater in his hand to 
pay for himself and for Jesus. The others told him of the questions 
that had been put to them, and of the silence they had observed, 
As they do so, this new instance of Peter's selection for a separate 
service stirs the embers of their former strife, and in their curiosity 



STRIFE AS TO WHO SHOULD BE GREATEST. 355 

and impatience one of them is bold enough to say to Jesus, " Who is 
or shall be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" Jesus sits down, 
calls the twelve that they might be all around him, and says to them, 
"If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last." 'If any man, 
actuated by selfish, covetous, ambitious motives, seek to be first in 
my kingdom, he shall be last — the very efforts that he shall make to 
climb to the highest elevation there being of their very nature such 
as shall plunge him to the lowest depths. But if any man would be 
first within that kingdom, first in goodness, first in usefulness, first in 
honor there, let him be last, willing to be the servant of others, ready 
to esteem others better than himself, prepared to take any place, to 
make any sacrifice, to render any service, provided only that others' 
welfare be thereby advanced. In humbling himself so, that man 
shall be exalted. I give to this great truth a visible and memorable 
representation.' Jesus called a little child to him, and set him in the 
midst, then took him into his arms, and said, " Yerily I say unto you, 
Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not 
enter into the kingdom of heaven." 'Ye are fighting about places, 
power, preeminence in my kingdom ; but I tell you that the selfish- 
ness, the pride, the ambition, out of which all such strife emerges, 
are so wholly alien from the nature of that kingdom which I have 
come to introduce and establish, that unless you be changed in spirit, 
and become meek, humble, teachable, submissive as this little child 
which I now hold so gently in my arms, ye cannot enter into that 
kingdom, much less rise to places of distinction there. You wish to 
know who shall be greatest in that kingdom. It shall not be the 
wisest, the wealthiest, the most powerful, but whosoever shall most 
humble himself, and in humility be likest to this little child, the same 
shall be greatest in the kingdom of heaven.' 'If that be true,' we 
can fancy the apostles thinking and saying, 'if all personal distinc- 
tion and preeminence must be renounced by us, if in seeking to be 
first we must be last, and each be the servant of all the others, what 
then will become of our official influence and authority — who will 
receive and obey us as thy representatives?' Our Lord's reply is 
this — 'Your true and best reception as my ambassadors does not 
depend upon the external rank you hold, or the official authority with 
which you may be clothed. It depends upon your own persona] 
qualities as humble, loving, devoted followers of me. This is true of 
you and of all ; for Avhosoever receiveth one such little child — one of 
these little ones which believe in me, in my name — receiveth me ; and 
whosoever receiveth me, receiveth not me but him that sent me.' 
This new idea about receiving the least of Christ's little ones in 



356 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

Christ's iiame^ awakens in the breast of one of his auditors a trou- 
bling remembrance. John recollects that he and some others of the 
disciples had once seen a man casting out devils in the name of 
Christ, and that they had forbidden him to do so, because, as they 
thought, he had no authority to do so, had received no commission 
was not even openly a follower of Jesus. Somewhat in doubt now, 
after what he has heard, as to whether they had been right in doing 
so, he states the case to Jesus, and gets at once the distinct and em- 
phatic "Forbid him not, for there is no man which shall do a miracle 
in my name that can lightly speak evil of me." John had judged 
this man rashly and severely, had counted him guilty of presumption 
in attempting, while standing outside the circle of Christ's acknowl- 
edged friends and followers, to do any thing in his name ; had doubted 
or disbelieved that he was a disciple of or a believer in Jesus. Full 
of the spirit of officialism, in the pride of his order as one of the 
selected twelve, to whom alone, as he imagined the power of working 
miracles in Christ's name had been committed, John had interfered 
to arrest his procedure — acting thus as the young man and as Joshua 
did, of whom we read in the book of Numbers, "And there ran a 
young man, and told Moses, and said, Eldad and Medad do prophesy 
in the canrp. And Joshua the son of Nun, answered and said, My 
lord Moses, forbid them." But Moses, in the very spirit of Christ, 
said, "Enviest thou for my sake? Would God that all the Lord's 
people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his Spirit upon 
them." Numb. 11 : 27, 29. " Forbid him not," said Jesus. ' His 
doing a miracle in my name is a far better evidence of his cherishing 
a real trust in me, being one of mine, than any external position or 
official rank that he could occupy. Be not hasty in deciding as to 
who are and who are not my genuine disciples ; for while that is true 
which I taught you when I was speaking of those who alleged that I 
cast out devils by Beelzebub the prince of the devils, that "he that is 
not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me scat- 
tereth abroad," (Matt. 12 : 30,) it is no less true that "he that is not 
against us is on our part.'" Neither of the two sayings, indeed, can 
be universally and unlimitedly applied; but there are circumstances 
in which absence of open hostility may of itself be taken as evidence 
of friendship ; and there are circumstances in which absence of open 
friendship may of itself be taken as evidence of hostility. Instead of 
overlooking as they had done, such a strong conclusive evidence as 
that of working miracles in Christ's name, John and the others 
should have been ready, as their Master was, to recognise the slight- 
est token of attachment. "For whosoever," added Jesus, "shall give 



OHEIST AND HIS BRETHEEN. 357 

you a cup of water to drink, in my name, because ye belong to 
Christ, verily I say unto you, He shall not lose his reward." 

" The beginning of strife," the wise man said, "is as when one let- 
teth out water." And that beginning of strife among the apostles 
of Christ as to which of them should be greatest, what a first letting 
:>ut was it of those bitter waters of contention, envy, and all unchari- 
tableness, which the centuries since Christ's time have seen flooding 
the church — its members struggling for such honors and emoluments, 
or, when these were but scanty, for such authority and influence as 
ecclesiastical offices and positions could confer ! Slow, indeed, has 
that society which bears his name been in learning the lesson which, 
first in precept, and then in his own exalted example, the Saviour left 
behind him, that " whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased, and 
he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." 

We have had before us the first of the two instances in which John 
was led away by a fiery and intemperate zeal — in this instance to 
misjudge and condemn one who, though he had not faith nor forti- 
tude enough to leave all and follow Jesus, yet had faith enough to 
enable him to work miracles in Christ's name. It is not told us how 
John took the check which Jesus laid upon that spirit of officialism 
and fanaticism which had been working in his breast. But we do 
know how thoroughly that spirit was at last subdued in the heart of 
the meekest and most loving of the twelve, and how he moved 
afterward among his fellow-men with step of Christ-like gentleness, 
and became the " guardian spirit of the little ones of the kingdom." 



M 

III. 

Christ and his Brethren.* 

We like to follow those who by their sayings and doings have 
filled and dazzled the public eye, into the seclusion of their homes. 
We like to see such men in their undress, when, all restraint removed, 
their peculiarities of character are free to exhibit themselves in the 
countless artless ways and manners of daily domestic life. It brings 
them so much nearer to us, gives us a closer hold of them, makes us 
feel more vividly their kinship to us, to know hew they did the things 
that we have all every day to do, how they comported themselves hi 
the circumstances in which we all every day are placed. Great pains 
have been taken by biographers of distinguished men to gratify this 

* John 7 : 1-9. 



358 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

desire. Quite apart, indeed, from any object of this kind, we could 
scarcely sit down to write out an account of what we saw and heard 
in the course of two or three years' close intercourse with a Mend, 
without dropping many a hint as to the minor modes and habits of 
his life. 

Is there nothing remarkable in the entire absence of any thing of 
thi3 kind in the narrative of the four evangelists ? Engrossed with 
what they tell us, we think not of what they have left untold ; think 
not, for example, that they have left no materials for gratifying the 
desire that we have spoken of — one so natural and so strong. It is 
as if, in writing these narratives, a strong bias of our nature had been 
put under restraint. They say not a word about the personal appear- 
ance of their Master ; there is nothing for the painter or sculptor to 
seize on. They give us no details of his private and personal habits, 
of any peculiarities of look or speech or gesture, of the times or ways 
of his doing this thing or that. St. Mark, the most graphic describer 
of the four, tells us once or twice of a particular look or motion of our 
Lord, but not so as to indicate any thing distinctive in their manner. 
Why this silence ? Why thus withhold from us all means of forming 
a vivid conception of the Redeemer's personal appearance, and of 
following him through the details of his more familiar daily inter- 
course with the twelve ? Was it that the materials were wanting, 
that there were no personal peculiarities about Jesus Christ, that 
inwardly and outwardly all was so nicely balanced, all was in such 
perfect harmony and proportion, that as in his human intellect and 
human character there was nothing to distinguish him individually 
from his fellow-men — nothing, I mean, of that kind by which all the 
individual intellects and characters are each specially characterized — 
so even in the minor habits of his life there was nothing distinctive to 
be recorded ? Or was it that the veil has been purposely drawn over 
all such materials, to check all that superstitious worship of the 
senses which might have gathered round minute pictures of our Lord 
in the acts and habits of his daily life ? If even as it is, the passion 
for such worship has made the food for itself to feed upon, and, living 
upon that food, has swelled out into such large proportions, what 
would it havej been if such food had from the first been provided ? 
Is it not well that the image of our Lord in his earthly life, while 
having the print of our humanity so clearly and fully impressed upon 
it, should yet be lifted up and kept apart, and all done that could be 
done to keep it from being sullied by such rude, familiar, irreverent 
regard ? 

What is true of our Lord's habits generally, is true of his reJi- 



CHRIST AND HIS BRETHREN. 359 

gious habits — of the time and manner in which religious duties were 
performed. We know something of the manner in which these duties 
were discharged by a truly devout Jew of Christ's age, of the daily 
washings before meals, and the frequent fastings, and the repeated 
and long prayers, of the attendance at the synagogue, and the regu- 
lar going up to the great feasts at Jerusalem. Some of these Jesus 
appears to have neglected. The scribes and the Pharisees came to 
him, saying, " Why do thy disciples trangress the tradition of the 
elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread." Matt. 
15 : 2. Again they came to him with another similar complaint, 
"Why do the disciples of John fast often and make prayers, and 
likewise the disciples of the Pharisees, but thine eat and drink?" 
These charges are brought nominally against the disciples, who only 
followed the example of their Master. He neglected the ordinary 
ablutions to which in Jewish eyes a sacred character attached. He 
himself did not fast, and he taught his disciples that when they did 
so it was to be in such a manner that men might not know that they 
were fasting. Of the times and the manner in which our Lord's 
private devotions were conducted, how little is revealed ! You read 
of his rising up a great while before day, and retiring into a solitary 
place to pray. Mark 1 : 35. You read of his sending the multitude 
away, and going up into a mountain to pray ; of his continuing all 
night in prayer. Matt. 14 : 23 ; Luke 6 : 12. You read of special acts 
of devotion connected with his baptism, his transfiguration, his agony 
in the garden, his suffering on the cross. We know that it was by 
him, and him alone, of all the children of men, that the precept " pray 
without ceasing," was fully and perfectly kept — kept by its being in 
the spirit of prayer that his whole life was spent — but when we ask what 
Christ's daily habit was, how often each day did he engage in specific 
acts of devotion, and how, when he did so, were these acts performed, 
did he retire each morning and evening from his disciples to engage in 
prayer, did he daily, morning and evening, pray with and for his disci- 
ples, the evangelists leave us without an answer. The single thing they 
tell us, and it conveys but little precise information, is, that " it came 
to pass that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, 
one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John 
also taught his disciples." Luke 11 : 1. This took place during the 
last six months of our Lord's ministry. It looks as if the disciples 
had come upon their Master when engaged in his solitary devotions, 
and had been so struck with what they saw and heard, that one of 
them, when the prayer was over, could not help asking him to teach 
them to pray. Remembering that this happened at so late a period 



360 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

m tlieir intercourse with him, does it not seem as if Jesus had not 
been in the habit of daily leading their devotions ? The very diffi- 
culty that we feel in understanding how at such a time such a ques- 
tion came to be put to him, shows us what a blank there is here in 
the evangelic narrative, and how ignorant we mast be content to 
remain. 

If the generally accepted chronology of our Lord's life be the true 
one, and we see no reason to reject it, we are not left in such ignorance 
as to how another of the religious duties practised at the time by those 
around him was discharged by Christ. His ministry in Galilee lasted 
eighteen months. During this period, four of the great annual reli- 
gious festivals at which the Jews were enjoined to attend had taken 
place at Jerusalem — two pentecosts, one passover, and one feast of 
tabernacles — at none of which Jesus appeared. There was indeed 
a reason for his absence, grounded on the state of feeling against 
him existing in Jerusalem, and the resolution already taken by the 
Jewislr leaders there to cut him off by death. Till his work in Galilee 
was completed he would not place himself in the circumstances which 
would inevitably lead on to that doom being executed. But who of 
all around him knew of that or any other good or sufficient reason 
for his absenting himself from these sacred festivals ? And to them 
what a perplexing fact must that absence have appeared! Alto- 
gether, when you take the entire attitude, bearing, and conduct of 
Jesus Christ as to their ablutions, their fastings, their prayers, their 
keeping of the Sabbath, their attendance at the feasts, it is not diffi- 
cult to imagine what an inexplicable mystery he must have been to 
the great majority of his countrymen. I do not speak now of the 
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, of whom his teaching and his life 
was one continued rebuke, and who hated him with a deadly hatred 
from the first, but of the many sincerely devout, superstitiously reli- 
gious Jews among whom he lived. What a perfect puzzle to such 
the character and career of this man Christ Jesus — one speaking so 
much and in such a way of God and of godliness, proclaiming the 
advent of God's own kingdom on the earth, unfolding its duties, its 
privileges, its blessednesses, yet to them seeming so neglectful, so unde- 
vout, so irreligious ! We may not be able now thoroughly to put our- 
selves in these men's position — thoroughly to understand with what 
kind of eyes it was that they looked upon that wonderful spectacle 
which the life of Jesus pressed upon their vision — but we should be 
capable of discerning the singular and emphatic protest which that 
life was ever raising against all mere formal piety, the piety of times 
and seasons and ordinances, the religion of rule and of routine. 



CHRIST AND IIIS BRETHREN. 361 

But let us now rejoin our Lord. He is once more at Capernaum, 
01 in its neighborhood. A year and a half has elapsed since he joined 
the bands in company with whom he had gone up to Jerusalem to 
keep the second passover after his baptism. It is autumn, and all 
around are busy in preparing for their journey to the capital to cele- 
brate the feast of tabernacles. But he exhibits no intention to 
accompany them. He is going apparently to treat this festival as 
he had done the four which preceded it. What others thought of 
his behavior in this respect we are left to conjecture. His brethren, 
however — those who were either his actual brothers or his cousins, 
the members of that household in which he had been brought up — 
could not let the opportunity pass without telling him what they 
thought of his cod duct. He and they had latterly been separated. 
They did not believe in him. They did not rank themselves among 
his disciples. Yet uninterested spectators of what had been going 
on in Galilee they could not remain. Now that Joseph was dead, he 
was the head of their family, and they could not but feel that their 
position and prospects were in some way linked with his. Somewhat 
proud they could not but be that he had excited such great attention, 
done such wonderful works, drawn after him such vast crowds. At 
first, with all their incredulity, they were half inclined to hope that 
some great future was in store for him. One who spake so highly 
and with such authority as he did, who claimed and exercised such 
power, what might he not be and do in a community so peculiarly 
placed, so singularly excitable as the Jewish one then was? He 
might even prove to be the Messiah, the great princely leader of the 
people, for whom so many were waiting. Against that was the whole 
style and character of his teaching — in which, instead of there being 
any thing addressed to the social or political condition of the people, 
any thing fitted to stir up the spirit of Jewish pride and indepen- 
dence, there was every thing calculated to soothe and subdue — to 
lead the thoughts and hopes of the people in quite other than earthly 
channels. Against it, too, there was the fact, becoming more appa- 
rent as the months ran on, that the natural leaders of the community, 
the scribes and Pharisees, by and through whom only it could be that 
any great civil emancipation could be effected, were uniting against 
him in a bond of firmer and fiercer hostility. Even the crowds of 
the common people, which had at first surrounded him, were latterly 
\eclining, offended at the way in which he was beginning to speak of 
nimself — telling them that except they ate his flesh and drank his 
blood they had no life in them. Emboldened by all this to use the 
old familiarity to which in other days they had been accustomed, his 



362 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

brethren come to Lira and say, " Depart hence, and go into Judea, 
that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest. For there 
is no man that doeth any thing in secret, and he himself seeketk to 
be known openly : if thou do these things, show thyself to the world." 
Imputing to him the common motives by which all worldly, selfish, 
ambitious men are animated, they taunt him with weakness and folly 
Who that possessed such powers as he did would be satisfied Avith 
turning them to such poor account? If he were what he seemed, 
was he to hide himself for ever among the hills of Galilee, and not go 
up boldly to the capital, and wrest from the rulers the acknowledg- 
ment of his claims ? It was but a pitiful success to draw after him 
some thousands of a gaping multitude, who followed him because 
they ate of the bread that he furnished and were filled — all whose 
faith in him was exhausted in wondering at him as the worker of such 
miracles. Let him, if he had the spirit of a true courage in him — if 
he was fit to take the leadership of the people — let him aim at once 
at far higher game — place himself at once in the centre of influence 
at Jerusalem, and show himself to the world. Then if, on that broad 
theatre, he made his pretensions good, it would be some honor to claim 
connection with him ; some benefit to be enrolled as his followers. 

How true is all this to that spirit of a mere earthly prudence and 
policy by which the lives of multitudes are regulated ! Christ's own 
brothers judge of him by themselves. They cannot conceive but that 
he must desire to make the most for his own benefit and aggrandize- 
ment of whatever gifts he possessed. They count it to be weak in 
him, or worse, that he will not do the most he can in this way and for 
this end. They measure all by outward and visible success. And if 
success of that kind be not realized, all the chances and opportuni- 
ties that are open to him they regard as thrown away and lost. In 
speaking thus to Jesus, they sever themselves by a wide interval from 
their great relative. He was not of this world. Unselfish, unworldly 
were all his motives, aims, and ends. They are of the world, and 
true children of the world they are, in thus addressing him, proving 
themselves to be. And this they must be told at least, if they will 
not effectually be taught. It was in a tone of assumed superiority 
that they had spoken to him when they prescribed the course he 
should pursue. How far above them does he rise, as from that alti- 
tude whose very height hid it from their eyes, he calmly yet solemnly 
rolls back on them their rebuke : " My time is not yet come, but your 
time is always ready. The world cannot hate you, but me it hateth. 
because I testify of it that the works thereof are evil. Go ye up unto 
this feast. I go not up yet unto this feast, for my time is not yet full 



CHRIST AND HIS BRETHREN. 363 

come." They would have him seize upon the opportunity of the 
approaching feast to show himself to the world, to win the world's 
favor and applause. This was their notion of human life. The stage 
upon which men play their parts here was in their eyes but as a 
mixed array of changes and chances upon which the keen eye of self 
ishness should be always fixed, ready to grasp and make the most oi 
them for purposes of personal aggrandizement. For such as they 
were, the time was always ready. They had no other reckoning to 
make, no other star to steer by, than simply to discern when and how 
their selfish interests could be best promoted, and what their hands 
thus found to do, to do it with all their might. The world could not 
hate them, for they were of the world, and the world loveth its own. 
Let them court its favor — let them seek its pleasures, its honors, its 
profits — and the world would be pleased with the homage that was 
offered it, and if they but succeeded, they might count upon its 
applause, for men would praise them when they did well for them- 
selves. Psa. 49 : 18. It was not so with Jesus, but utterly and dia- 
metrically the reverse. His was no life either of random impulses, 
of fitful accident, or of regulated self-seeking. The world he lived in 
was to him no antechamber, with doors of aggrandizement here and 
there around, for whose opening he was greedily to watch, that he 
might go in speedily and seize the prizes that lay beyond before others 
grasped them. It was the place into which the Father had sent him 
to do there that Father's business, to finish the work there given him 
to do. And in the doing of that work there is to be no heat, no hurry, 
no impatience with him. The time, the hour for each act and deed, 
was already settled in the purposes and ordinances of the Father. 
And the Father's time, the Father's hour were his, for which he was 
always ready calmly and patiently to wait. The world's hatred he 
counted on — he was prepared for. He knew what awaited him at 
Jerusalem. He knew what the hatred cherished against him there 
would finally and ere long effect ; but he must not prematurely expose 
himself to it, nor suffer it to hasten by a single day the great decease 
he was to accomplish at Jerusalem. His time was coming — the time 
of his manifestation to Israel — of his showing forth to the world — a 
very different kind of manifestation from that of which his brethren 
were dreaming. But it was not yet fully come, and therefore he did 
not mean to go up to Jerusalem and openly to take part from the 
beginning as one of its celebrators in this approaching Feast of Tab- 
ernacles. This, in ways which we can easily conjecture, but are not 
at liberty dogmatically to assert, would have interfered with the 
orderly evolution of the great event in which his earthly ministry was 



364: THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

to close. But the time was fixed — that feast was drawing on — when 
his hour would come, and then it would be seen how the Son would 
glorify the Father and the Father be glorified in the Son. 

And now let us remember that the sharp and vivid contrast drawn 
here by our Saviour's own truthful hand — between himself and his 
brethren according to the flesh — is the very same that he has 
iaught us to draw between all his true disciples and the world. Let 
us listen to the description he gave of his own in that sublime inter- 
cessory prayer offered up on the eve of his agony, in that upper cham- 
ber in which the first communion was celebrated : " They are not of 
the world, even as I am not of the world." The Father did not need 
to know for whom his Son was then interceding. The Father did not 
need to have any description of their character given to him. Yet 
twice in that prayer did Jesus say of his true followers thus : " They 
are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." To know and 
feel and act as he did ; under the deep abiding impression that, low 
as our lives are compared with his — small and insignificant as the 
ends are that any of us can accomplish — yet that our times, our ways. 
our doings are all ordered by heavenly wisdom for heavenly ends 
that the tangled threads of our destiny are held by a Father's hand, 
to be woven into such patterns as to him seems best ; by the cross of 
our Redeemer — by the redemption that was by it wrought out for 
as—by the great example of self-sacrifice that was in it exhibited — 
by the love of Him who died that we might live, to have the world 
crucified unto us, and ourselves crucified to the world ; to have the same 
mind in us that was in Him who came not to be ministered unto, but 
to minister ; who, though he was so rich, for our sakes became 
poor, that we through his poverty might be rich. This would be to 
realize the description that our Lord has left behind him of what all 
his true disciples ought to be, and in some measure are. As we take 
up and apply the test it supplies, how deeply may we all humble our- 
selves before him — under the consciousness of how slightly, how par- 
tially, if at all, the description is true of us ! 



CHRIST AT THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 365 

IV. 

Christ at the Feast of Tabernacles.* 

Great national benefits, civil, social, and religions, were conferied 
upon the Jews by the ordinance that three times each year the whole 
adult population of the country should assemble at Jerusalem. The 
finest seasons of the year, spring and autumn, were fixed on for these 
gatherings of the people. The journeyings at such seasons of friends 
and neighbors, in bands of happy fellowship, must have been health- 
ful and exhilarating. Separated as it was into clans or tribes, the 
frequent reunion of the entire community must have tended to coun- 
teract and subdue any jealousies or divisions that might otherwise 
have arisen. The meeting together as children of a common progen- 
itor, living under the same laws, heirs of the same promises, worship- 
pers of the same God, must not only have cultivated the spirit of 
brotherhood and nationality, but have strengthened their faith and 
guarded from the encroachments of idolatry the worship of the coun- 
try. Among the lesser advantages that these periodical assemblages 
brought along with them, they afforded admirable opportunities for 
the expression and interchange of the sentiments of the people on 
every subject that particularly interested them — what in our times 
the press and public meetings do, they did for the Jews. So far as 
we know, no nation of antiquity had such full and frequent means of 
testing and indicating the state of public feeling. Whatever topic 
had been engrossing the thoughts of the community would be sure 
to be the subject of general conversation in the capital the next time 
that the tribes assembled in Jerusalem. Kemembering how fickle 
public feeling is, how difficult it is to fix it and keep it concentrated 
upon one subject for any considerable period, we may be certain that 
it was a subject singularly interesting — one which had taken a gen- 
eral and very strong hold of the public mind, that for a year and a 
half, during five successive festivals, came up ever fresh upon the lips 
of the congregated thousands. 

Yet it was so as to the appearance among them of Jesus Christ. 
Eighteen months had passed since he had been seen in Jerusalem, 
yet no sooner has the Feast of Tabernacles commenced than the 
Jews look everywhere around for him, and say, "Where is he? M 
The absence of one man among so many thousands might, we should 
think, have passed by unnoticed. The absence of this man is thf 

* John 7 : 11-52. 



8(36 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

subject of general remark. The people generally speak of him with 
bated breath, for it is well enough known that he is no favorite with 
the great men of the capital; and as they speak, great discord of opin- 
ion prevails. It gives us, however, a very good idea of the extent 
and strength of the impression he had made upon the entire popula- 
tion of the country, that at this great annual gathering, and after so 
long an absence, he is instantly the object of search, and so gene- 
rally the subject of conversation. Even while they were thus speak- 
ing of him he was on his way to Jerusalem. Travelling alone, or but 
slenderly escorted, and choosing an unfrequented route, so that no 
pre-intimation of his approach might reach the city, he arrives about 
the middle of the feast, and throws off at once all attempt at conceal- 
ment. Passing, as we might think, from the extreme of caution to the 
extreme of daring, he plants himself among the crowd in the temple 
courts, and addresses them as one only of the oldest and most learned 
of the rabbis might have ventured to do. Some of the rulers are there, 
but the suddenness of his appearance, the boldness of the step he 
takes, the manner of his speech, make them for the time forget their 
purpose. They can't but listen like the rest, but they wont give 
heed to the things about the divine kingdom that he is proclaiming. 
What strikes them most, and excites their wonder, is that he speaks 
go well, quotes the Scriptures, and shows himself so accurately 
acquainted with the law. " How knoweth this man letters," they say 
of him, "having never learned?" They would turn the thoughts of 
the people from what Jesus was saying to the consideration of his 
title and qualification to address them. 'Who is this? in what school 
was he trained ? at the feet of which of our great rabbis did he sit ? 
by what authority does he assume this office ?' Questions very nat- 
ural for men full of all the proud and exclusive spirit of officialism to 
put ; questions by the very putting of which they would lower him in 
the estimation of the multitude, and try to strip his teaching of its 
power. They give to Jesus the opportunity of declaring, " My doc- 
trine is not mine, but his that sent me." ' I am not addressing you 
either as a self-taught man, or one brought up in any of your schools. 
I am not addressing to you truths that I was taught by others, or 
have myself elaborated. Think not of me, who or what I am ; think 
of what I teach, receive it as coming, not from me, but from him who 
sent me. You ask about my credentials ; you would like to know 
what right I have to become a teacher of the people. There is a far 
simpler and better way of coming to a just conclusion about my teach- 
ing than the one that you are pointing to, and happily it is one that 
lies open unto all. If any man is truly willing to do the Divine will ; 



CHEIST AT THE FEAST OF TABEENACLES. 367 

if lie wants to know what that will is in order that he inay do it ; if 
that, in listening to my teaching, be his simple, earnest aim, he shall 
know of the doctrine that I am teaching, whether it be of God, or 
whether I speak of myself. No amount of native talent, no extent ol 
school learning of any kind, will compensate for the want of a pure 
and honest purpose. But if such a purpose be cherished, you shah 1 
Bee its end gained ; if your eye be single, your whole body shall be 
full of light.' And still the saying of our Lord holds good, that in 
the search of truth, in the preserving us from error, in the guiding of 
us to right judgments about himself and his doctrine, the heart has 
more to do with the matter than the head — the willingness to do 
telling upon the capacity to know and to believe. Jesus asks that 
he himself be judged by this principle and upon this rule. What, in 
teaching was his aim ? Was it to display his talent, to win a repu- 
tation, to have his ideas adopted as being his ? — was it to please him- 
self, to show forth his own glory ? How boldly does he challenge these 
critical observers to detect in him any symptom of self-seeking ! With 
what a serene consciousness of the entire absence in himself of that 
element from which no other human heart was ever wholly free, does 
he say of himself, " He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own 
glory : but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, 
and no unrighteousness is in him." 

So much is said by Jesus to encourage all truly desirous to 
know about him, so much to vindicate himself against the adverse 
judgment of the rulers ; but how does all this apply to them ? Have 
they the willingness to do? have they the purity and the unsel- 
fishness of purpose? This feast of tabernacles was the one pecu- 
liarly associated with the reading of the law. "And Moses com- 
manded them, saying, At the end of every seven years, in the feast 
of tabernacles, when all Israel is come to appear before the Lord thy 
God in the place which he shall choose, thou shalt read this law 
before all Israel in their hearing, that they may hear, and that they 
may learn, and fear the Lord your God, and observe to do all the 
words of this law." Deut. 31 : 10-12. It is in presence of the very 
men whose duty it was to carry out this ordinance, that Jesus is now 
standing. From the first they hated him, and from the time, now 
eighteen months ago, that he had cured the paralytic, breaking, as 
they thought, the Sabbath, and said that God was his father, making 
himself equal with God, they had resolved to kill him. This was the 
way — by cherishing hatred and the secret intent to murder — that 
they were dealing with the law. Boiling their adverse judgment of 
liim back upon themselves, and dragging out to light the purpose 



368 THE LIFE OP CHRIST, 

that in the meantime they would have kept concealed, Jesus said, 
"Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth 
the law? Why go ye about to kill me?" Those to whom that 
question is more immediately addressed have no answer to give to 
It ; but in the crowd are those who, ignorant of the plot against the 
life of Jesus, yet sharing in the rulers' contempt and hatred, say 
to him, " Thou hast a devil : who goeth about to kill thee ?" Christ 
stops not to deal with such a speech, but takes up at once what 
had furnished so painful a weapon in the hands of the Pharisees 
against him. He refers to that one deed still fresh in the minds 
of ail those in Jerusalem. The offence of that one act of his in 
curing the impotent man on a Sabbath-day, had been made to 
overshadow all his other acts, to overbear all his other claims to 
attention and regard. "I have done one work," he said, "and 
ye all marvel," as if I had thereby plainly proved myself a breaker 
of the Sabbath law. Formerly, before the Sanhedrim, he had 
defended himself against this charge of Sabbath breaking by other 
and higher arguments. Now, addressing, as he does, the common 
people, he takes an instance familiar to them all. The Sabbath law 
runs thus : " Thou shalt do no work on the seventh iay. 5 ' How was 
this law to be interpreted? If the circumcision of a man on the 
seventh day was not a breach of it, and no one thought it was, what 
was to be said of the healing of a man upon that day ? If ye on 
the Sabbath circumcise a man, and the law of Moses is not broken, 
why " are ye angry at me, because I have made a man every whit 
whole on the Sabbath-day?" The analogy was so perfect, and the 
question so plain, that no reply was attempted. In the temporary 
silence that ensues, some of the citizens of Jerusalem, who were aware 
of the secret resolution of the Sanhedrim, struck with wonder at what 
they now see and hear, cannot help saying, "Is not this he whom 
they seek to kill ? But, lo, he speaketh boldly, and they say nothing 
unto him. Do the rulers know indeed that this is the very Christ ?" 
We might imagine the words to have come from those who were ready 
themselves to see the very Christ in Jesus ; but though they share not 
their rulers' persecuting spirit, these men have a prejudice of their 
own. It had come to be a very general opinion about this time in 
Judea, that the Messiah was to have no common human origin— no 
father or mother — he was to be raised from the dead beneath, or to 
ocme as an angel from the heavens. His not meeting this require- 
ment is enough, with these men, to set aside the claims of Jesus of 
Nazareth. "Howbeit," they say, as men quite satisfied with the 
sureness of the ground on which they go, " Howbeit we know this 



CHRIST AT THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 369 

man whence he is : but when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence 
he is. Then cried Jesus in the temple as he taught " — such an easy 
and self-satisfied way of disposing of the whole question of his Mes- 
siahship causing him to lift up his voice in loud and strenuous pro- 
test — " Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am : and I am not 
come of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom ye know not. But 
I know him : for I am from him, and he hath sent me." The old and 
oft-repeated truth of his mission from the Father, coupled now with 
such a strong assertion of his own knowledge and of these men's 
ignorance of who his Father was, they are so irritated as to be dis- 
posed to proceed to violence ; but upon them, as upon the rulers, 
there is a restraint : " No man laid hands on him, because his hour 
was not yet come." 

So impressed in his favor have many of the onlookers now 
become, that they are bold enough to say, " When Christ cometh, 
will he do more miracles than these which this man hath done ?" 
As Jesus had done no miracles at this time in Jerusalem, the speak- 
ers obviously refer to what he had elsewhere wrought. Their speech 
is immediately reported to the Pharisees and chief priests sitting in 
council in an adjacent court of the temple, who, so soon as they hear 
that the people are beginning to speak openly in his favor, send offi- 
cers to take him. With obvious allusion to the errand on which these 
men come, as if to tell them how secure he felt, how sure he was that 
his comings and his goings in the future would be all of his own 
free will, Jesus says, " Yet a little while am I with you, and then I 
go to him that sent me. Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me : 
and where I am, thither ye cannot come ;" words very plain to us, 
but very dark to those who have no other interpretation to put upon 
them but that he may mean perhaps to leave Judea and go to the 
dispersed among the Gentiles. Little, however, as they were under- 
stood, there was such a tone of quiet yet sad assurance about them, 
that the high priests' officers pause, and return to give this to their 
employers as the reason why they had not executed the order given 
tliem, " Never man spake like this man." 

So ended out- Lord's first day of teaching in the temple, a day 
revealing on his part a wisdom, a courage, a serene, sublime, untrou- 
bled trust which took his adversaries by surprise, and held all their 
deadly purposes against him in suspense, and on the part of the mul- 
titude the strangest mixture of conflicting opinions and sentiments, 
with which our Lord so dealt as to win exemption from like interrup- 
tions afterwards, and to secure for himself an unbroken audience an 
the day when his last and greatest words were spoken. 

Life of Olii-Ut 24 



370 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

The feast of tabernacles was instituted to commemorate the time 
when the Israelites had dwelt in tents during their sojourn in the des- 
ert. To bring the remembrance of those long years of tent-life more 
vividly before them, the people were enjoined, during the seven days 
that it lasted, to leave their accustomed homes, and to dwell in booths 
or huts made of gathered branches of the palm, the pine, the myrtle, 
or other trees of a like thick foliage. It must have been a strange 
spectacle when, on the day before the feast, the inhabitants of Jeru- 
salem poured out from their dwellings, spread themselves over the 
neighborhood, stripped the groves of their leafiest branches, brought 
them back to rear them into booths upon the tops of their houses, 
along the leading stree s, and in some of the outer courts of the 
temple. The dull, square, stony aspect of the city suffered a singu- 
lar metamorphosis as these leafy structures met everywhere the eye. 
It was the great Jewish harvest-home ; for this feast was celebrated 
in autumn, after all the fruits of the earth had been gathered in. It 
was^within the temple that its joyous or thanksgiving character espe- 
cially developed itself. Morning and evening, day by day, during 
•sacrifices more crowded than those of any other of the great festivals, 
the air was rent with the praises of the rejoicing multitudes. At the 
time of the libation of water, the voice of their glad thanksgiving 
swelled up into its fullest and most jubilant expression. Each morn- 
ing a vast procession formed itself around the little fountain of Siloam 
down in the valley of the Kedron. Out of its flowing waters the 
priests filled a large golden pitcher. Bearing it aloft, they climbed 
the steep ascent of Moriah, passed through the water-gate, up the 
broad stairs, and into the court of the temple, in whose centre the 
altar stood. Before this altar two silver basins were planted, with 
holes beneath to let the liquid poured into them flow down into the 
subterranean reservoir beneath the temple, to run out thence into the 
Kedron, and down into the Dead sea. One priest .stood and poured 
the water he had brought up from Siloam into one of these basins. 
Another poured the contents of a like pitcher filled with wine into 
the other. As they did so, the vast assemblage broke out into the 
most exalting exclamations of joy. The trumpets of the temple 
sounded. In voice and upon instrument, the trained choristers put 
forth all their skill and power. Led by them, many thousand voices 
chanted the Great Hallel, (the Psalms from the 113th to the 118th, ) 
pausing at the verses on which the chief emphasis was placed to 
wave triumphantly in the air the branches that they all bore, and 
make the welkin ring with their rejoicing. This was the happiest, 
service in all the yearly ceremonial of Judaism. "He," said the old 



CHRIST AT THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 371 

Jewish proverb, " who has never seen the rejoicing at the pouring 
out of the waters of Siloam, has never seen rejoicing all his life." All 
this rejoicing was connected with that picturesque proceeding by 
which the Lord's providing water for his people in their desert wan- 
derings was symbolized and commemorated. And few, if any, have 
ioubted that it was with direct allusion to this daily pouring out ol 
the waters of Siloam, which was so striking a feature of the festival, 
that on the last, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, 
" If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink." ' Your fore- 
fathers thirsted in the wilderness, and I smote the rock for them, so 
that the waters flowed forth. I made a way for them in the wilder- 
ness, and gave rivers in the desert to give drink to my people — my 
chosen. But of what was that thirst of theirs, and the manner in 
which I met it, an emblem ? Did not Isaiah tell you, when in my 
name he spake, saying, " I will pour water on him that is thirsty, and 
floods upon the dry ground. I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, 
and my blessing upon thine offspring. When the poor and needy 
seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the 
Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I 
will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the val- 
leys. I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land 
springs of w T ater?" And now I am here to fulfil in person all the 
promises that I made by the lips of my servant Isaiah, and I gather 
them up and condense them in the invitation, " If any man thirst, let 
him come unto me and drink." ' 

" If any man thirst !" Ah ! the Saviour knew it of these rejoicing 
Israelites, that glad and grateful as they were for the land that they 
had entered into out of the wilderness — no dry and thirsty land, but 
one of springs ard of rivers, of the early and the latter rain — there 
was a thirst that none of its fountains could quench, a hunger that 
none of its fruitage could satisfy. And he knows it of us, and of all 
men, that a like deep inward thirst dries up our spirit, a like deep 
inward hunger is ever gnawing at our heart. Are there no desires, 
and longings, and aspirations in these souls of ours that nothing 
earthly can meet and satisfy ? Not money, not honor, not power, not 
pleasure, not any thing nor every thing this world holds out — they do 
not, cannot fill our hearts — they do not, cannot quench that thirst 
that burns within. Can any one tell us where we may carry this great 
thirst and get it fully quenched? From the lips of the man Christ 
Jesus the answer comes. He speaks to the crowds in the temple at 
Jerusalem, but his words are not for them alone ; they have been 
given to the broad heavens, to be borne wide over all the earth, and 



372 THE LIFE OF OHEIST. 

down through all its generations : "If any man thirst, let him come 
unto me and drink." Thirsty we know we are, and thirsty shall 
remain till we hear these gracious words, and hearing come, and 
coming drink, and drinking get the want supplied. Yes, we believe— 
Lord help our unbelief — that there is safety, peace, rest, refreshment, 
joy for these weary aching hearts in thee, the well-spring of our eter- 
nal life. 

" He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his 
belly shall flow rivers of living water." Below the spot on which Jesus 
stood when speaking in the courts of the temple, there lay vast sub- 
terranean vaults, whose singular recesses have only recently been 
explored. Descending into them, you get a glimpse, by help of 
dimly burning tapers, of a vast cistern below the site of the ancient 
temple. Whether this large reservoir be filled wholly from without, 
or has a spring of living waters supplying it from below, remains to 
be ascertained. Enough, however, has been discovered to stamp with 
truth the ancient Jewish stories about the great cistern, " whose com- 
pass was as the sea," and about the unfailing waters of the temple. 
Nor can we any longer doubt that it was to these subterranean supplies 
of water that the prophet Joel alluded when he said, " It shall come 
to pass in that day that a fountain shall come forth out of the house 
of the Lord, and shall water the valley of Shittim ;" that the prophet 
Zechariah alluded to when he said, "It shall be in that day that 
living waters shall go out from Jerusalem, half of them turned 
toward the former sea, and half of them toward the hinder ;" that still 
more pointedly the prophet Ezekiel alluded to when he said, " After- 
ward he brought me again into the door of the house, and behold 
waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward, 
and the waters came down from under the right side of the house, at 
the south side of the altar." And as little can we doubt that Jesus 
had these very scriptures in his thoughts, and that cavity beneath 
his feet in his eye, when he said, " He that believeth on me, as the 
Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." 
'He that believeth shall not barely and alone have his own thirst 
assuaged, but I in him, by my Spirit given, moulding him into my 
own likeness, shall turn him into a separate w T ell-head, from whose 
depths rivers of living water shall flow forth to visit, gladden, fruc- 
tify some lesser or larger portion of the arid waste around.' Let us 
know and remember then, that Jesus, the Divine assuager of the 
thirst of human hearts, imparts the blessing to each who comes to 
him, that he may go and impart the blessing to others. He comforts 
us with a sense of his presence, guidance, protection, sympathy, thai 



JESUS THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 373 

we may go and console others with that same comfort wherewith we 
have been comforted of him. He never gives that we may selfishly 
hoard the treasure that w T e get. That treasure, like the bread that 
was broken for the thousands on the hillside of Galilee, multiplies in 
-he hand that takes it to divide and to distribute. 



V. 

Jesus the Light of the World.* 

Jesus was in the treasury. It stood at the north side of one of 
those large enclosures called the Court of the Women, which lay oui>- 
side the temple properly so called, and in which, on all the great 
annual festivals, crowds were wont daily to assemble. In the centre 
of this court, at the feast of tabernacles, two tall stands were placed, 
each supporting four large branching candelabra. As at the time of 
the morning sacrifice, the procession wound its way up from the 
fountain of Siloam, and the water was poured out from the golden 
pitcher to remind the people of the supply of water that had been 
made for their forefathers during the desert wanderings ; so after the 
evening sacrifice all the lights in these candelabra were kindled, the 
flame broad and brilliant enough to illuminate the whole city, to 
remind the people of the pillar of light by which their marchings 
through the wilderness were guided. And still freer and heartier 
than the morning jubilations which attended on the libation of the 
water, were the evening ones, which accompanied the kindling of the 
lights. It was with allusion to the one ceremony that Jesus said, 
"If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink." It was with 
allusion to the other, of which both he and those around him were 
reminded by the stately chandeliers which stood at the time before 
their eyes, that he said, " I am the light of the world ; he that follow- 
eth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." 
In uttering both these sayings, Jesus placed himself in a singular and 
elevated relationship to the whole human family. In the one he 
invited the entire multitude of human thirsters to come to him to 
have their thirst assuaged. In the other, he claimed to be the one 
central source of light and life to the whole world. Is it surprising 
that as they looked at him, and heard him speaking in this way, and 
thought of who and what, according to their reckoning he was, the 
Jews should have seen egotism and arrogance in his words ? There 

» John 8:12-59. 



374 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

was in truth the very utmost pitch of such arrogance and egotism in 
them, had the speaker been such as they deemed him, a man like 
themselves. But one of his very objects in speaking so was tc con- 
vince them and us that he was not such — that he stood toward the 
human family in quite other relationship from that in which an* 
single member could stand to all the rest — that besides his conuec* 
tion with it, he had another and higher connection, that with his 
Father in heaven, which entitled him to speak and act in a way 
peculiar to himself. By word and deed, again and again repeated, 
Jesus had sought in vain to convey into the minds of these Jews an 
idea of how singular that connection was. He tries now once again, 
and once again he fails. Instead of their asking, ' Who is this that 
offers to quench all human thirst, and who proclaims himself to be 
the light of the world ?' saying to themselves in reply, ' He must be 
more than human, he must be divine ; for who but One could claim 
such a prerogative and power ?' they listen only to find something to 
object to, and, grasping greedily at what lay on the very surface of 
the sayings, they say to him, " Thou bearest record of thyself ; thy 
record is not true." Perhaps they had our Lord's own words on the 
occasion of the former visit to Jerusalem on their memory : " If Ibeai 
witness of myself, my witness is not true." He was speaking then of 
a solitary unsupported testimony — a testimony imagined to be borne 
by himself, to himself, and for himself, as one seeking to advance his 
own interests, promote his own glory. Such a testimony, had he 
borne it, he had then said would be altogether untrustworthy. His 
answer now to those who would taunt him at once with egotism and 
inconsistency is, " Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is 
true : for I know whence I came, and whither I go." ' Had I not 
known that I came forth from the Father and am going back to the 
Father, that I am here only as his representative and revealer — did 
the consciousness of full, clear, constant union with him not fill my 
spirit — I would not, could not speak as I now do. But I know the 
Father, even as I am known by him ; he works, and I work with 
him ; whatsoever things he doeth I do likewise. It is out of the 
depth of the consciousness of my union with him that I speak, and 
what man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man that is 
in him ; and how else are you ever to know what can alone be known 
by my revealing it, if I do not speak of myself, or do not speak as he 
only can who stands in the relationship in which I do to the Father 

'But "ye cannot tell whence I come and whither I go." You 
never gave yourselves any trouble to find it out. You never opened 
mind or heart to the evidence that I laid before you. What early 



JESUS THE LIGHT OF THE WOULD. 375 

alienated you from nie was that I came riot accredited as you would 
have desired, submitted no proofs of my heavenly calling to you for 
your approval, made no obeisance to 3^011 on entering on my career, 
came not up here to seek instruction at your hands, asked not from 
you any liberty to act as a scribe, a teacher of the law — instead of 
this, claimed at once this temple as my Father's house, condemned 
the way in which you were suffering its sacred precincts to be defiled, 
and have ever since, in all that I have said and done, been lifting up 
a constant, loud, and strenuous protest against you and your ways. 
You sit now in judgment upon me— you condemn me. You say that 
I am bearing record of myself, and that my record is not true ; but 
"ye judge after the flesh." You have allowed human prejudice, 
human passion, to fashion your judgment. I so judge no man. It 
was not to judge that I came into this world. I came not to con- 
demn, but to save it. And yet if I judge, as in one sense I must, and 
am even now about to do, my judgment is true, for I am not alone, 
but I and the Father that sent me judge, as we do every thing, 
together. Your own very law declares, " that the testimony of two 
men is true." I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father 
that sent me beareth witness of me.' 

As if they wished this second witness to be produced, they say to 
him contemptuously, " Where is thy Father ? Jesus answered, Ye 
neither know me, nor my Father." ' You think that you know me, 
you pride yourselves in not being deceived in me as the poor ignor- 
ant multitude is — my earthly pedigree, as believed in by you, satis- 
fies you as to my character and claims. You can scarcely, after all 
that I have said, have failed to perceive whom I meant when I was 
speaking of my Father. Him, too, you think you know ; you pride 
yourselves on your superior acquaintance with him, you present your- 
selves to the people as the wisest and best expounders of his will and 
law. But " ye neither know me, nor my Father ;" for to know the one 
is to know the other — to remain ignorant of the one is to remain 
ignorant of the other. It is your want of all true knowledge of me 
that keeps you from knowing God. It is the want of all true knowl- 
edge of God that keeps you from knowing me. Had you known me, 
you would have known him ; had you known him, you Avould have 
known me.' 

So fared it with our Lord's declaration that he was the light of 
Ihe world, as it was at first spoken in the temple ; so ended the first 
brief colloquy with the Jews to which its utterance gave birth. 
There was one, however, of its first hearers, upon whom it made a 
very different impression from that it made on the rulers of the Jews, 



376 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

who treasured it up in his heart, who saw ever, as his Master's life 
evolved itself before him, more and more evidence of its truth, whose 
spirit was afterwards enlightened to take in a truer, larger idea of the 
place and function of his Lord in the spiritual kingdom than has 
ever, perhaps, been given to another of the children of men, who, on 
this account, was chosen of the Lord to set them forth in his gospel 
And in his epistles, and who has given to us this explanation of the 
words of his Master: "In the beginning was the Word, and the 
Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the 
beginning with God. All things were made by him ; and without 
him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life ; and 
the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness ; 
and the darkness comprehendeth it not." John " came for a witness, 
to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. 
He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. 
That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into 
the world." " And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, 
(andrwe beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the 
Father,) full of grace and truth." " That which was from the begin- 
ning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which 
we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of 
life, for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear wit- 
ness, and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father, 
and was manifested unto us." " This is the true God and eternal life." 
Such is the description John has left us of him who spiritually is the 
sun of this dark w r orld, the central source of all its life and light. The 
life and light of the soul lie in the love of its Creator, in likeness to 
him, communion with him, in free glad service rendered, the joy of 
his approval felt. Freshly, fully was life and light enjoyed by man 
in the days of his innocence ; the light of God's gracious presence 
shone upon his soul, and gladdened all his heart. Made in his Ma- 
ker's image, he walked confidingly, rejoicingly, in the light of his coun- 
tenance, reflecting in his own peaceful, loving, holy, happy spirit as 
much as such mirror could of the glory of his Creator. He diso- 
beyed and died; the light went out; at one stride came the dark, 
But the gloom of that darkness, the stillness of that death, were 
not suffered to prevaiL From the beginning life and light have 
gone forth from Christ ; all the spiritual animation that this world 
anywhere has witnessed, all the spiritual light by which its darkness 
has been alleviated, spring from him. The great Sun of Bighteous- 
Bess, indeed, seemed long in rising. It was a time of moon and stars 
*nd morning twilight till he came. But at last he arose, with heal- 



JESUS THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 377 

Log in his beams. And now it is by coming unto him that death is 
turned into life, and darkness into light. He that hath him hath 
life, he that followeth him walketh not in darkness, but has the light 
of life. 

The short colloquy between Christ and the Pharisees, consequent 
upon his announcement of himself as the light of the world, ended in 
their lips being for the moment closed. The silence that ensued was 
speedily broken by our Lord's repeating what he had said before 
about his going away — going where they could not follow. The 
speech had formerly excited only wonder, and they had said among 
themselves, "Will he go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles?" 
Now their passion against him has so risen that it excites contempt, 
and they say openly, not indeed to him, but of him, " Will he kill 
himself ?*' ? That would indeed be to go where we could not follow. 
Perhaps that may be what he means.' The drawing of such a dis- 
tinction between themselves and him gives Jesus the opportunity of set- 
ting forth the real and radical difference that there was between them. 
The portraiture of their character and pedigree which, with truthful 
and unsparing hand, he proceeded to fill up, amid many rude breaks 
and scornful interruptions on their part, we shall not minutely scru- 
tinize. One or two things only about the manner of our Lord's treat- 
ment of his adversaries in this word-battle with them, let us note. 

He does not say explicitly that he is the Christ. His questioners 
were well aware what kind of person their Messiah was generally ex- 
pected to be, how different from all that Jesus was. They would provoke 
him to make a claim which they knew would be generally disallowed 
He will not do it. When they say, " Who art thou ?" he contents 
himself by saying, ' I am essentially or radically that which I speak ; 
my sayings reveal myself, and tell who and what I am.' In this, as 
in so many other instances of his dealing with those opposed to him 
at Jerusalem, his sayings were confined to assertions or revelations, 
not of his Messiahship, but of his unity of nature, will, and purpose 
with the Father. This was the great stumbling-block that the Jews 
found ever and anon flung down before them. That in all which 
Jesus was and said and did he was to be taken as revealing the char- 
acter and expressing the will of God, was what they never could allow, 
and the more that the idea of a connection between him and God 
apprr aching to absolute identification was pressed upon them, the 
more tney resented and rejected it. But why? Jesus himself told 
thorn Their unbelief, he constantly asserted, sprung from a moralh 
impure source ; from an unwillingness to come into such living con- 
tact with the Father • from their dislike to the purity, the beiievo 



378 THE LIFE OF CHRIST, 



; 



lence, the godliness that were in him as in the Father. When driven 
from the position they first assumed as children of Abraham, they 
claimed a still higher paternity, and said, " We have one Father, eve 
God." Our Lord's reply was, " If God were your Father, ye woul 
?ove me, for I proceeded forth and came from God ; neither came I 
yf myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech ? 
even because ye cannot hear my word." 

They wore a mask ; behind that mask they hid a malicious dis- 
position, and so long as deceitfulness and malignity ruled their spirit 
and regulated their lives, children of Abraham, children of God, they 
were not, could not be. Thty might boast what other parentage 
they pleased, but their works proclaimed that they were none other 
than the children of him who was a liar and a murderer from the 
beginning. " Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your 
father ye will do." Yery plain language, and very severe — not lan- 
guage for man to use to man — suitable alone for him who knew what 
was-in man, who came as its light into the world, and discharged one 
of his offices as such in laying bare the hidden corruption with which 
he came into contact, for " all things that are reproved are manifest 
by the light, for whatsoever doth make manifest is light." 

" But as he spake these words many believed on him," and for 
them, amid all his rebukes of his enemies, this was his word of 
encouragement, that if they continued in his word, if they but fol- 
lowed faithfully the light that shone in him, they should know the 
truth, know him who was the truth, and in him, and by that truth, 
they should be made free. These Jews imagined that simply as the 
children of Abraham they were free. So fondly did they cling to this 
idea, that often as the yoke of the stranger had been on them, they 
were ready proudly to say, " We were never in bondage to any man." 
Notwithstanding this, they were slaves — slaves to sin and Satan. In 
one sense they were in God's house, numbered outwardly as members 
of its household ; but being actually such slaves, in that house they 
could not abide for ever. But if he who was not a servant in the 
house of another, but an heir in his own house — his Father's house— 
if he made his followers free, then were they free indeed. And into 
what a glorious liberty should they thus be introduced ! freedom from 
the Law, its curse and condemnation ; freedom from the yoke of Jew- 
ish and all other ceremonialism ; freedom from the fear of guilt and 
the bondage of corruption ; freedom to serve God willingly and lov- 
ingly — to be all, do all, suffer all which his will requires— this was 
the liberty wherewith Christ was ready to make free. This freedom 
was to be tasted but in imperfect measure by any here on earth, for 



JESUS THE LIGHT OF THE WOELD. 379 

still onward to the end the old tyrant whose subjects they had been, 
would be making his presence and power felt ; still onward to the 
end, while the mind was serving the law of God, a law would be iu 
the members warring against the law of the mind. But the hour of 
a final and complete emancipation was to come at death. Death ! ii 
looked to nature like the stoppage of ail life, the breaking of all ties, 
the quenching of all freedom and all joy. Not such was it to be to 
him who shared the life that Jesus breathes into the soul. To him 
it was to be rather light than darkness, rather life than death, the 
scattering of every cloud, the breaking of every fetter, the deliver- 
ance from e\erj foe, the setting of the spirit absolutely and for ever 
free to soar with unchecked, unshadowed wing, up to the fountain- 
head of all life and blessedness, to bask in the sunshine for ever. 
" Verily, verily, if a man keep my sayings, he shall never see death." 

But now let us look a moment at the special testimonies to his 
own person and character which, upon this occasion, and in the 
course of these rough conflicts with scornful and contemptuous oppo- 
nents, Jesus bore. Light is its own revealer. The sun can be seen 
alone in the beams that he himself sends forth. So is it with him 
who is the light of the world. It is in the light of his own revelation 
of himself that we can see Jesus as he is. And what, as seen in the 
beams that he here sheds forth, does he appear? Two features of 
his character stand prominently displayed : his sinless holiness, his 
preexistence and divine dignity. In proof of the stainless purity of 
his nature and his life, Jesus when here on earth made a threefold 
appeal. He appealed to earth, to hell, to heaven, and earth, hell, 
and heaven each gave its answer back. Two of these appeals you 
have in the passage that is now before us. Jesus appealed to earth 
when, looking round upon those men who with the keen eye of jeal- 
ousy and hatred had been watching him from the beginning to see 
what flaws they could detect in him, he calmly and confidently said, 
1 Which of you convinceth me of sin, of any sin, the slightest trans- 
gression ?' And earth gave her answer when these men stood speech- 
less before him. 

He appealed to hell — to that devil of whom he spoke so plainly 
as the father of all liars and all murderers, who would have accused 
and maligned him had he dared. " The prince of this world oometh 
and findeth nothing in me" — nothing of his own, nothing that he car. 
claim, no falsehood, no malice, no selfishness, no unholiness in me. 
And hell gave its answer when the devil, whom Christ's word of 
power drove forth from his human habitation, was heard to say, " J 
know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God." 



:i80 the life of christ. 

" Again, our Saviour carried the appeal to heaven, and, standing 
in the presence of the Great Searcher of all hearts, he said, in words 
that had been blasphemous from any merely human lips, " I do 
always those things that please him." And thrice during his mortal 
sareer the heavens opened above his head, and the voice of the Father 
was heard proclaiming, " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well 
pleased." 

What shall we think or say of him who claimed such perfect 
immunity from sin — the entire absence of any thing that could draw 
down upon it the Divine displeasure, the full presence of all that 
could draw down upon it the Divine approval ? Was he, who knew 
others so well, ignorant of himself ? or, conscious of transgression, did 
he yet deny it? Ignorant beyond other men, a hypocrite worse than 
those whom he charged with hypocrisy, must Jesus Christ have been, 
if, in speaking of his sinlessness as he did, his speech was not the free 
and natural expression of a self-consciousness of perfect purity, truth, 
and holiness of heart and life. In presence of one realizing such 
unstained perfection, who never once, in thought or word, or deed, 
swerved from the right, the true, the good, the holy, how humbled 
should we be under the consciousness of how different it is with us ; 
and yet with that sense of humiliation should not the elevating, enno- 
bling thought come in, that he in whom the sublime idea of a sinless 
perfection stands embodied, was no other than our Lord and Saviour, 
who came to show us to what a height this weak and sinful humanity 
of ours could be raised, who became partaker of our nature that we 
through him might become partakers of the Divine, and of whom we 
know that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see 
him as he is. 

" Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and 
was glad." Christ's day was no other than that of his manifestation 
in the flesh. Abraham rejoiced that he should see that day, and 
lived his earthly life cheered by the animating prospect. And he saw 
it, as Moses and Elijah did; for he was one of those who, in Christ's 
sense of the words, had not tasted of death, of whom it was witnessed 
that he liveth, to whom in the realms of departed spirits the knowl- 
edge of the Redeemer's advent had been conveyed. 

Jesus had said that Abraham had seen his day. They twist his 
words as if he had said that he had seen Abraham. " Thou art not 
yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham ?" The contemptu- 
ous query gives to our Lord the opportunity of lifting the veil that 
concealed his glory, and making the last, the greatest revelation of 
himself . " Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.' 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 381 

Not simply, " Before Abraham was, I was," not simply a declaration of 
a being before Abraham, but a taking to himself the great, the incom- 
municable name, carrying with it the assertion of self-existence, of 
supreme divinity. So they understood it, who instantly took up 
stones to stone him as a blasphemer. And so let us understand it, 
not taking up stones to stone him, but lifting up hearts and hands 
together to crown him Lord of all. 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 



Christ is still at Jerusalem during this Study, and through miracle 
and teaching brings the challenge of his claims yet more pointedly 
before those who had resented the idea of his being the light. Taking 
a man blind from his birth, probably sitting at the very temple gates, 
he brings light to the eyes that have never seen. Not only Jesus' 
deed, but the unanswerable reasoning of the man, stirs up the Pharisees 
to cast out of the synagogue the one who has been healed. Jesus finds 
him in the temple and asks, " Dost thou believe on the Son of God ? " 
The man hears the voice of the wonderful Helper, who, when the 
disciples were inquiring whether it was himself or his parents' sin that 
caused his condition, had asserted in a tone of gentle authority that it 
was neither; and had then put upon his eyes the strange dressing, 
and with the same sweetly compelling authority had told him to go 
to the pool of Siloam and wash, Now by that marvellous power of 
using his eyes at once as well as having their sight restored, he looks 
upon the one who has healed him, and asks, " Who is he, Lord? that 
I might believe on him." Jesus answers, " Thou hast both seen him, 
and it is he that talketh with thee." At once the man declares his 
belief and worships Christ. These last steps, as well as the man's 
remarkable defence of the true character of his healer before the 
Pharisees, show that there was something inherently strong and noble 
about this humble nature. 

Then when a later opportunity is afforded, Jesus asserts, in the face 
of the men who assume that they can open and close the kingdom of 
God, that he alone is the real Door and the Shepherd of the sheep, 
that others, even the Gentiles, are to be brought to become one flock 
with genuine Jewish believers; that the Good Shepherd has power 
through the sacrifice of his life to keep forever those who come to him ; 
and that he is one with the Father. 

It is impossible to resist the conclusion that Christ meant to claim 
essential unity of nature and attributes between himself and the 



381a THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Father, in his statements to the Jews at the feast of Dedication as well 
as at other times. When he says, " I and my Father are one," they 
understand that he makes such a claim, and they take up stones to 
stone him, and later they declare, " For a good work we stone thee not, 
but for blasphemy, and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself 
God." Had Christ regarded this meaning which they give to his 
words as an error, it would have been easy for him to have corrected 
it and to have kept them from continuing to hold the impression which 
his words had given them, but he makes no effort to do this. Rather, 
he proceeds in his discourse to a point where, because of other assertions, 
they seek to take him to deal with him as a blasphemer, but he escapes 
out of their hands. Properly therefore does the author say: " That 
neither upon this nor upon any other occasion of the same kind did our 
Lord complain of being condemned mistakenly when regarded as 
being guilty of blasphemy, nor offer the explanation which at once 
would have set aside the charge, we regard as the clearest of all proofs 
that the Jews were not in error in interpreting his sayings as they 
did" (p. 402). 



PART III. MAIN MINISTRY IN JUDEA AND PER^EA. 
Study 12. Further Words and Works of Grace at Jerusalem. 

(1) Cure of the man born blind 3816-390 

a. Jesus sees the blind man 3816 

6. He corrects a mistaken view as to the man's affliction 382 

c. He cites other cases in proof 382-384 

d. He brings comforting truth to the man's mind 384, 385 

e. He anoints the eyes and bids the man go wash in the pool of Siloam . 385 

/. The man receives his sight 385, 386 

g. The Pharisees vainly seek to disprove the divine glory of the 

miracle 386-388 

h. They excommunicate the man 388 

i. Jesus further discloses himself to him 389, 390 

(2) Christ the Gogd Shepherd 390-402 

a. Blinding result for those who will not see 390, 391 

b. Marks of the good shepherd 391 

c. The real door for the sheep 391, 392 

d. Christ clearly declares himself the Good Shepherd 392 

e. Relations in which he stands to the sheep 392-397 



THE CURE OF THE MAN BORN BLIND. 3816 

/. Other sheep, one flock, one shepherd 397 

g. Probable sojourn in Galilee 397 

h. Return to Jerusalem at Feast of Dedication 397 

i. Further shepherd comparisons 398-401 

j. Oneness with the Father 401, 402 



VI. 

The Cure of the Man Born Blind.* 

Within the court of the temple, in presence of the Pharisees and 
their satellites, Jesus had said, " I am the light of the world : he that 
followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." 
The saying, resented as egotistical and arrogant, led on to that alter- 
cation which ended in their taking up stones to cast at him, and in his 
hiding himself in some mysterious way and passing out of the temple, 
" going through the midst of them." At one of the temple-gates, or 
by the roadside without, " as Jesus passed by he saw a man which was 
blind from his birth " — a well-known city beggar, whom Jesus and 
his disciples may have often passed in their way up to the temple. 
Now, at the very time when we might have imagined him more than 
ordinarily desirous to proceed in haste, in order to put himself beyond 
the reach of the exasperated men out of whose hands he had jnst 
escaped, Jesus stops to look compassionately upon this man. He 
sees in him a fit subject for a work being done, which, in the lower 
sphere of man's physical nature, shall illustrate the truth which he 
had in vain been proclaiming in the treasury, that he was the light of 
the world. As he stops, his disciples gather round him, and fix their 
eyes also upon the man whose case has arrested their Master's foot- 
steps, and seems to have absorbed his thoughts. But their thoughts 
are not as his. They look, to think only of the rarity and severity of 
the affliction under which the man is laboring — to regard it as a judg- 
ment of God, whereby some great sin was punished — the man's own, it 
would be natural to suppose it should be ; but then, the judgment had 
come before any sin had been committed by him — he had been blind 
from his birth. Could it be that the punishment had preceded the 
offence, or was this a case in which the sins of the parents had been 
visited on their child? " Master," they say to Jesus in their perplex- 

* John, chap. 9. 



382 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

fty, " who did sin, this man or liis parents, that he was born blind ?' 
The one thing that they had no doubt about — and in having no suca 
doubt, were only sharing in the sentiment of all the most devout of 
their fellow-countrymen — was that some signal sin had been com- 
•nitted, upon which the signal mark of God's displeasure had been 
stamped. It was not as to the existence somewhere of some exceeding 
fault that they were in the least uncertain. Their only doubt was 
where to lay it. It was the false but deep conviction which lay 
beneath their question that Jesus desired to expose and correct when 
he so promptly and decisively replied, " Neither hath this man sinned 
nor his parents ;" neither the one nor the other has sinned so peculiarly 
that the peculiar visitation of blindness from birth has been visited on 
the transgression. Not that Jesus meant to disconnect altogether 
man's suffering from man's sins. Had he meant to do so, he would 
not have said to the paralytic whom he cured at the pool of Bethesda, 
" Go thy way, sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee ;" but 
that he wanted, by a vigorous stroke, to lay the axe at the root of a 
prevalent superstitious feeling which led to erroneous and presump- 
tuous readings of God's providences, connecting particular sufferings 
with particular sins, and arguing from the relative severity of the 
one to the relative magnitude of the other. 

Nor was this the only instance in which our Saviour dealt in the 
same manner with the same popular error. But a few weeks from 
the time in which he spake in this way to his disciples, Jesus was 
in Persea. There had been a riot in Jerusalem — some petty prem- 
ature outburst of that insurrectionary spirit which was rife through- 
out Judea. Pilate had let loose his soldiers on the mob. Some 
Galileans, who had taken part in the riot, or were supposed to have 
done so, for the Galileans were always in the front rar/k of any move- 
ment of the kind, were slain — slain even while engaged in the act of 
sacrificing, their blood mingled with their sacrifices : an incident so 
fitted to strike the public eye, to arouse the public indignation, that 
the news of it travelled rapidly through the country. It reached the 
place where Christ was teaching. Some of his hearers, s'ruck, per- 
haps, by something that he had said about the signs of the times and 
the judgments that were impending, took occasion publicly to tell him 
of it. Perhaps they hoped that the recital would draw out from him 
some burning expressions of indignation, pointed against the foreign 
yoke under which the country was groaning ; the deed done by the 
Boman governor had been so gross an outrage upon their national 
religion, upon the sacredness of the holy temple. If the tellers of the 
tale cherished any such expectation, they were disappointed A? 




"A Man Blind From his Birth.' 



THE CUKE OF THE MAN BOKN BLIND. 883 

upon all like occasions, whenever any purely political question was 
brought before him, Christ evaded it. He never once touched ox 
alluded to that aspect of the story. But there was another side of it, 
upon which he perceived that the thoughts of not a few of his hear- 
ers were fastened. It was a terrible fate that these slaughtered Gali> 
leans had met — not only death by the Eoman sword, but death within 
the courts of the temple, death upon the very steps of the altar. 
There could be but one opinion as to the deed of their murderers, 
those rough Gentile soldiers of Pilate. But the murdered, upon 
whom such a dreadful doom had fallen, what was to be thought of 
them ? Christ's all-seeing eye perceived that already in the breasts 
of many of those around him, the leaven of that censorious, unchar- 
itable, superstitious spirit was working, which taught them to attach 
all extraordinary calamities to extraordinary crimes. " Suppose ye," 
said Jesus, "that these Galileans were sinners above all Galileans, 
because they suffered such things? I tell you nay." To give his 
question and his answer a still broader aspect — to take out of them 
all that was peculiarly Galilean — he quotes another striking and well- 
known occurrence that had recently happened near Jerusalem, a ca- 
lamity not inflicted by the hand of man. " Or those eighteen," he 
adds, " upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, think ye that they were 
sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem ? I tell you nay." He 
does not deny that either the slaughtered Galileans or the crushed 
Jerusalemites were sinners. He does not say that they did not de- 
serve their doom. He does not repudiate or run counter to that strong 
instinct of the human conscience, which in all ages has taught it to 
trace suffering to sin. "What he does repudiate and condemn is the 
application of that principle to specific instances, by those who know 
so little, as we do, of the Divine purposes and aims in the separate 
events of life — making the temporal infliction the measure of the guilt 
from which it is supposed to spring. It is not a wrong thing for the 
man himself, whom some sudden or peculiarly severe calamity over- 
takes, to search and try himself before his Maker, to see whether 
there has not been some secret sin as yet unrepented and unforsaken, 
which may have had a part in bringing the calamity upon him. It 
was not a wrong thing in Joseph's brethren, in the hour of their great 
distress in Egypt, to remember their former conduct, and to say, " We 
are verily guilty concerning our brother, therefore is this distress come 
upon us." It was not a wrong thing for the king of Besek, when 
they cruelly mutilated him, cutting off his thumbs and great toes, to 
say, " Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and great toes 
cut off, gathered their meat under my table. As I have done, so 



384 THE LIFE OP OHBI-S'T: 

God hath requited nie." But it was a wrong thing in the inhaWtsrttfe 
of Melita, when they saw the viper fasten on Paul's hand, to think 
and say that " no doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath 
escaped the sea, yet vengeance sufYereth not to live." It was a wrong 
thing in the widow of Zarephath, when her son fell sick, to say to 
Elijah, " What have I to do with thee, O thou man of God ? Art 
thou come to call my sins to remembrance, and to slay my son ?" It 
was a wrong thing for the friends of Job to deal with their afflicted 
brother as if his abounding misfortunes were so many proofs of a like 
abounding iniquity. It is a very wrong thing in any of us to pre- 
sume so to interpret any single dealing of God with others, particu- 
larly of a dark or adverse kind ; for all such dispensations of his prov- 
idence have a double character. They may be retributive ; or they 
may be simply disciplinary, corrective, protective, purifying. They 
may come in anger, or they may be sent in love. And while as to 
ourselves it may be proper that we should view them as bearing 
messages of warning, we are not at liberty as to others to attribute 
to them any other character than that of being the chastenings of 
a wise and loving Father. 

"Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the 
works of God should be manifest in him." Those works — works of 
mercy and almighty power — were given to Christ to do, and here was an 
opportunity for one of them being done. To pause thus by the way, to 
occupy himself with the case of this poor blind beggar, might seem a 
waste of time, the more so that the purpose of his persecutors to seize 
and to stone him had been so recently and so openly displayed. But 
that very outbreak of their wrath foretold to Jesus his approaching 
death — the close of his allotted time of earthly labor — and so he 
says, " I must work the works of him that sent me while it is day ; 
the night cometh, when no man can work. As long as I am in the 
world, I am the light of the world." • I said so to those proud and 
unbelieving men from whose rough violence I have just escaped. I 
will prove now the truth of what I said by bringing the light physi- 
cally, mentally, spiritually, to this poor blind beggar. 

All this time not a word is spoken by the blind man himself. 
Whatever cries for help he may have raised when he heard the foot- 
steps of the approaching company, as they stop before him he be- 
comes silent. He hears the question about his own sins and his 
parents' sins put by strange Galilean tongues to one addressed evi- 
dently with the greatest respect. He hears the one thus appealed 
to say, with an authority that he wonders at, " Neither hath this man 
sinned, nor his parents " — grateful words to the poor man's ear. He 



THE CURE OF THE MAN BORN BLIND. 385 

may have thought, in common with others, that he had been signally 
marked as an object of Divine displeasure. The words that he now 
hears may have helped to lift a load off his heart ; already he may be 
more grateful to the speaker of these few words than if he had cast 
the largest money-gift into his bosom. But the speaker goes farther : 
he says that he had been born blind " that the works of God should 
bp made manifest in him." If it were not the work of God's anger in 
the punishment of his own or his father's sins, what other work could 
it be ? And who can this be who is now before him, who speaks of 
what he is, and what he does, and what he is about to do, with such 
solemnity and self-assurance ? Who can tell us what new thoughts 
about himself and the calamity that had befallen him, what new 
thoughts about God and his purposes in thus dealing with him, what 
wonderings as to who this stranger can be that takes such an interest 
in him, what flutterings of hope may have passed through this poor 
man's spirit while the brief conversation between Christ and his disci- 
ples was going on, and during that short and silent interval which fol- 
lowed as Jesus " spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle " ? 
This we know, that when Christ approached and laid his hand upon 
him, and anointed his eyes with that strange salve, and said to him, 
while yet his sightless balls were covered with what would have 
blinded for the time a man who saw, " Go wash in the pool of Siloam," 
he had become so impressed as quietly to submit to so singular an 
operation, and without a word of arguing or remonstrance to obey 
the order given, and to go off to the pool to wash. It lay not far off, 
at the base of the hill on which the temple stood, up and around 
which he had so often groped his way. He went and washed, and 
lo, a double miracle ! — the one wrought within the eyeball, the other 
within the mind — each wonderful even among the wonders wrought 
by Christ. Within the same compass there is no piece of dead or liv- 
ing mechanism that we know of so curious, so complex, so full of nice 
adjustments, as the human eye. It was the great Creator's office to 
make that eye and plant it in its socket, gifting it with all its varied 
powers of motion, outward and inward, and guarding it against all 
the injuries to wdiich so delicate an instrument is exposed. It was 
the Creator's will that some fatal defect, or some fatal confusion of 
its parts and membranes, should from the first have existed in the 
eyeball of this man. And who but the Creator could it be that roc 
tilled the defect or removed the confusion, bestowing at once upon 
the renovated organ the full power of vision ? Such instant recon- 
struction of a defective, or mutilated, or disorganized eye, though not 
in itself a greater, appears to us a more surprising act of the Divine 

U(e of ChritL 25 



386 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

power than the original creation of the organ. You watch with ad- 
miration the operation of the man who, with a large choice of means 
and materials, makes, and grinds, and polishes, and adjusts the set 
of lenses of which a telescope is composed. But let some accident 
happen whereby all these lenses are broken and crushed together in 
one mass of confusion, what would you think of the man who could 
out of such materials reconstruct the instrument ? It was such a dis- 
play of the Divine power that was made when the man born blind 
went and washed and saw. 

But however perfect the eye be, it is simply a transmitter of light, 
the outward organ by which certain impressions are made upon the 
optic nerves, by them to be conveyed to the brain, giving birth there 
to the sensations of sight. But these sensations of themselves con- 
vey little or no knowledge of the outward world till the observer's 
mind has learned to interpret them as signs of the position, forms, 
sizes, and distances of the outlying objects of the visible creation. It 
is but slowly that an infant learns this language of the eye. It requires 
the putting forth of innumerable acts of memory, and the acquiring 
by much practice a facility of rapid interpretation. That the man 
born blind should be able at once to use his eyes as well as we all do, 
it was needed that this faculty should be bestowed on him at once, 
without any teaching or training ; and when we fully understand (as 
it is somewhat difficult to do) what the powers were which were thus 
instantly conveyed, the mental will appear not less wonderful than 
the material part of the miracle of our Lord — that part of it too, of 
which it is utterly impossible to give any explanation but this, that 
there was in it a direct and immediate putting forth of the Divine 
power. The skilful hand of the coucher may open the eye that has 
been blind from birth, but no human skill or power could convey at 
once that faculty of using the eye as we now do, acquired by us in 
the forgotten da,ys of our infancy. It may be left to the fanaticism 
of unbelief to imagine that it was the clay and the washing which 
restored his sight to the man born blind, but no ingenuity of concep- 
tion can point us to the natural means by which the gift of perfect 
vision could have been at once conferred. 

Yet of the fact we have the most convincing proof. It was so pat- 
ent and public that there could be no mistake about it. It was sub- 
jected to the most searching investigation — to all the processes of a 
judicial inquiry. When one so well known as this blind beggar, whcm 
so many had noticed on their way up to the temple, was seen walking 
among the other worshippers, seeing as well as any of them, the ques- 
tion was on all sides repeated, " Is not this he that sat and begged ?" 



THE CUBE OF THE MAN BOKN BLIND. 38? 

Some said it was ; others, distrusting their own sight, could only say 
he was like him ; but he removed their doubts by saying, " I am he." 
Then came the question as to how his eyes were opened. He told 
them. Somehow or other, he had learned the name of his healer. 
"A man that is called Jesus made clay and anointed mine eyes, and 
<§aid unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam and wash ; and I went and 
washed, and I received sight." But Jesus had not yet been seen 
by him ; he knew not where he was. It was so very singular a thing 
this that had been done — made more so by its having been done 
upon a Sabbath-day — that some of those to whom the tale was told 
would not be satisfied till the man went with them to the Pharisees, 
sitting in council in a side-chamber of the temple. They put the 
same question to him the others had done, as to how he had received 
his sight, and got the same reply. Even had Jesus cured him by a 
word, they would have regarded it as a breach of the Sabbath, but 
when they hear of his making clay and putting it on his eyes, and then 
sending him to lave it off in the waters of Siloam — all servile work 
forbidden, as they taught — they seize at once upon this circumstance, 
and say, " This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the Sab- 
bath-day." The question now was not about the cure, which seemed, 
in truth, admitted ; but about the character of the curer. Such instant 
and peremptory condemnation of him as a Sabbath-breaker roused a 
spirit of opposition even in their own court. Joseph was there, or 
Nicodemus, or some one of a like sentiment, who ventured, in oppo- 
sition to the prevailing feeling, to put the question, " How can a man 
that is a sinner do such miracles?" But they are overborne. The 
man himself, at least, who is there before them, will not dare to defend a 
deed which he sees the majority of them condemn. They turn to him, 
and say, " What sayest thou of him, that he hath opened thine eyes ?" 
They are mistaken. Without delay or misgiving, he says at once, 
" He is a prophet." They order him to withdraw. They are some- 
what perplexed. They wish to keep in hand the charge of Sabbath- 
breaking, but how can they do so without admitting the miracle? It 
would serve all their purposes could they make it out that there had 
been some deception or mistake as to the man's having been born 
blind — the peculiar feature of the miracle that had attracted to it 
such public notice. They summon his parents, who have honesty 
enough to acknowledge that the man is their son, and that he was 
born blind ; but as to how it is that he now sees, they are too timid 
to say a word. They know that it had been resolved that, if any 
man confessed that Jesus was the Christ, he was to be excommuni- 
cated — a sentence carrying the gravest consequences, inflicting the 



388 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

severest social penalties. But they have great confidence in the 
sagacity of their son ; he is quick-witted enough, they think, to extri- 
cate himself from the dilemma. "He is of age," they say; "ask 
him : he shall speak for himself." He is sent for ; appears again in 
their presence, ignorant of what has transpired — of what his parents* 
in their terror, may have said. And now, as if their former judgment 
against Jesus had been quite confirmed, and stood unquestionable, 
they say to him, " Give God the praise " — an ordinary Jewish form 
of adjuration. " My son," said Joshua to Achan, " give glory to the 
Lord God of Israel, and make confession to him, and tell me now 
what thou hast done." And so now these Pharisees to this poor beg- 
gar : ■ My son, give God the praise. We know, and do you confess, 
that this man is a sinner.' They are again at fault. In blunt, plain 
speech, that tells sufiiciently that he will not believe that Jesus is a 
sinner simply because they say it, he says, " Whether he be a sinner, 
I know not ; one thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see." 
Balked in their first object to browbeat and overawe him, they will 
try again whether they can detect any inconsistency or contradiction 
in his testimony, and so they ask him to tell them over again how the 
thing had happened. Seeing through all the thin disguise they are 
assuming in seeming to be so anxious to get at the truth, he taunts 
them, saying, " I have told you already, and ye did not hear ; where- 
fore would ye hear it again ? will ye also be his disciples ?" No ambig- 
uous confession of discipleship on his part. So at least they took it 
who replied, " Thou art his disciple : we are Moses' disciples. We 
know that God spake unto Moses ; as for this fellow, we know not from 
whence he is." Poor though he be, and altogether at the mercy of 
the men before whom he stands, the healed man cannot bear to hear 
his healer spoken of in such contemptuous terms. With a courage 
that ranks him as the first of the great company of confessors, and 
with a wisdom that raises him above all those high-born and well- 
taught Pharisees, he says, " Why, herein is a marvellous thing, that 
ye know not from whence he is, and yet he hath opened mine eyes. 
Now we know that God heareth not sinners ; but if any man be a wor- 
shipper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth. Since the world 
began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was 
born blind. If this man were not of God, he could do nothing." So 
terse, so pungent, so unanswerable the speech, that passion now takes 
the place of argument, and the old and vulgar weapon of authority is 
grasped and used. Meanly casting his calamity in his teeth, they 
say, " Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us ?" 
And they cast him out — excommunicated him on the spot. 



THE CURE OF THE MAN BORN BLIND. 389 

Jesus hears of the wisdom and the fearlessness that he had dis- 
played in the defence of the character and doings of his healer, and 
of the heavy doom that had in consequence been visited on him, and 
throws himself across his path. Meeting him by the way, he says to 
him, " Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" Up to this moment he 
bad never seen the man who had anointed his eyes with the clay and 
bidden him to go and wash in the pool of Siloam. He might not by look 
alone have recognized him, but the voice he never could forget. As 
soon as that voice is heard, he knows who the speaker is. Much he 
might have liked to tell, and much to ask ; but all other questions 
are lost in the one that, with such emphasis, the Saviour puts — " Dost 
thou believe on the Son of God?" He had heard of men of God, 
prophets of God, the Christ of God ; but the Son of God — one claim- 
ing the same kind of paternity in God that every true son claims in 
his father — such a one he had never heard of. " Who is he, Lord ?" 
he asks, " that I might believe on him. And Jesus said unto him, 
Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee." Never 
but once before that we remember — never but to the woman of Sama- 
ria — was so clear, so direct, so personal a revelation of himself made 
by Jesus Christ. In both — the woman by the wellside, the blind beg- 
gar by the wayside — Jesus found simplicity and candor, quickness of 
intelligence, openness to evidence, readiness to confess. Both followed 
ihe light already given. Both, before any special testimony to his 
own character was borne by Jesus himself, acknowledged him to be 
a prophet. Both thus stepped out far in advance of the great mass 
of those around them — in advance of many who were reckoned as dis- 
ciples of the Lord. The man's, however, was the fuller and firmer 
faith. It had a deeper foundation to rest on. Jesus exhibited to the 
woman such a miracle of knowledge as drew from her the exclama- 
tion. " Sir, I perceive thou art a prophet." Upon the man he wrought 
such a miracle of power and love as begat within the deep conviction 
that he was a true worshipper of God, a faithful doer of the Divine 
will, a man of God, a prophet of God ; and to this conviction he had 
adhered before the frowning rulers, and in face of all that they could 
do against him. He had risked all, and lost much, rather than deny 
such faith as he had in Jesus. And to him the fuller revelation was 
imparted. Jesus only told the woman of Samaria that it was the 
Messiah — the Christ of God — who stood before her. He told the 
man that it was the Son of God that stood before him. How far the 
discovery of his Sonship to God — his true and proper diviuity — went 
beyond that of his Messiahship, we shall have occasion heron ft or 
to unfold. But see how instantaneous the faith that follows the meat 



390 THE LIFE OF OHKIST. 

and unexpected disclosure. "Who is he, Lord," 'the Son of God of 
whom you speak ?' " I that speak unto thee am he. And he said, 
Lord, I believe, and he worshipped him ;" worshipped him as few of 
his immediate followers yet had done ; worshipped him as Thomas 
and the others did when they had the great miracle of the resurrection 
and the sight of the risen Saviour to establish and confirm their faith. 
What shall we say of this quick faith and its accompanying worship, 
evidences as they were of a fresh full tide of light poured into this 
man's mind ? Shall we say that here another miracle was wrought — 
an inward and spiritual one, great and wonderful as that when, by 
the pool-side of Siloam, he washed those sightless eyeballs, and as he 
washed the clear, pure, bubbling water showed itself — the first bright 
object that met his opening vision — and he lifted up his eyes and 
looked around, and the hills of Zion and of Olivet, and the fair val- 
ley of the Kedron, burst upon his astonished gaze ? That, perhaps, 
were wrong : for, great as the work of God's Holy Spirit is in enlight- 
ening and quickening the human soul, it is not a miraculous one, and 
should not be spoken of as such. But surely, of the two — the open- 
ing of the bodily and the opening of the spiritual vision — the latter 
was God's greater and higher gift. 



L 



VII. 

The Good jShepherd.* 

The blind beggar of Jerusalem was healed. How different the 
impression and effect of this healing upon the man himself, on the 
one side, and the Pharisees, his excommunicators, on the other! 
He, a poor, uneducated, yet simple-minded, simple-hearted man, 
grasping with so firm a hold, and turning to such good account the 
knowledge that he had, and eager to have more ; reaping, as the fruit 
of Christ's act of mercy met in such a spirit, the unfolding by our 
Lord himself of his highest character and office : they, the guides and 
Leaders of the people, so well taught and so wise, unable to discredit 
the miracle, yet seizing upon the circumstance that it was done upon 
the Sabbath, and turning this into a reproach, their prejudices fed 
and strengthened, their eyes growing more blinded, their hearts more 
hardened against Christ. This contrast appears to have struck the 
mind of our Lord himself. It was in the temple, the only place 
« John 5:39^1; 10,1-39. 



THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 391 

where he could meet his fellow- men while under the ban of the 
Sanhedrim, that the healed man met Jesus. They may have been 
alone, or nearly so, when Christ put the question, " Dost thou be- 
lieve on the Son of God?" and having got the answer which showed 
what readiness there was to receive further light, made the great dis- 
closure of his Divinity. Soon, however, a number of the Pharisees 
approach, attracted by the interview. As he sees, compares, con- 
trasts the two — the man and them — he says, " For judgment am I 
come into this world, that they which see not" (as this poor blind 
beggar) "may see, and that they which see" (as the Pharisees) 

? might be made blind." The Pharisees are not so blind as not to 
perceive the drift and bearing of the speech. They mockingly 
inquire, "Are we blind also?" "If ye were blind," is our Lord's 
reply, ' utterly blind, had no power or faculty of vision/ " ye should 
have no sin : but now ye say, "We see." * You think you see ; you 
pride yourselves on seeing so much better and so much farther than 
others. Unconscious of your existing blindness, you will not come 
to me to have your eyes opened : will not submit to the humbling 
operation at my hands : therefore your sin remaineth, abides, and 
accumulates upon you. Here was a poor stricken sheep, whom ye, 
claiming to be the shepherds of the flock, have cast out from your 
fold, whom I have sought and found. Let me tell you who and what 
a true shepherd of God's flock is. He is one that enters by the door 
into the sheepfold, to whom the porter opens readily the door, 
whoso voice the sheep are quick to recognize, who calleth his own 
sheep by name, going before them and leading them out. He is a 
stranger, a thief, a robber, and no true shepherd of the sheep, who 
will not enter by the door, but climbeth up some other way.' Acute 
enough to perceive that this was said concerning human shepherds 
generally, leaders or pastors of the people — intended to distinguish 
the true among such from the false — and that some allusion to them 
selves was intended, Christ's hearers were yet at a loss to know what 
the door could be of which he was speaking, and who the thieves and 
robbers were. Dropping, therefore, all generality and all ambiguity, 
Jesus adds, " Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the 
sheep." ' I have been, I am, I ever shall be, the one and only door 
of entrance and of exit, both for shepherds and for sheep. All that 
ever came before me, without acknowledging me, independently of 
<ne, setting me aside, yet pretending to be shepherds of the sheep — 
they are the thieves and the robbers. I am the door ; by me, if any 
man enter in, whether he claims to be a shepherd, or numbers him- 
self merely as one of the flock — those who are shepherds as to others 



Y 

392 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

being still sheep as to me — if any man so enter in, lie shall be saved, 
and shall go in and out, and find pasture.' 

Thus much being said of the door, the one way of entrance into 
God's true fold, the image of the door is dropped, and, without cir 
cumlocution or reserve, Christ announces himself as the Good Shep- 
herd, and proceeds to describe his character and work as such. ' I 
am the Good Shepherd; not simply a kind or loving shepherd, as 
opposed to such as are unkind or harsh in their treatment of the 
flock, but I am the one, the only one, in whom all the qualities need- 
ful to constitute the time and faithful shepherd meet and culminate 
in full and harmonious perfection. I am the Good Shepherd, who 
has already done, who waits still to do, that for the sheep which none 
other ever did or could do.' On one or two of the qualities or char- 
acteristics which Christ here claims for himself, as wearing and exe- 
cuting the office, let us now fix our thoughts. 

1. He sets before us the minute personal interest that he takes in 
each individual member of his flock. " He calleth his own sheep by 
name, and leadeth them out." The allusion here is to the fact that 
Eastern shepherds did give a separate name to each separate sheep, 
who came, in time, to know it, and, on hearing it, to follow at the 
shepherd's call. It is thus that, when Isaiah would set forth the 
relation in which the Great Creator stands to the starry host, he 
represents him as leading them out at night as a shepherd leadeth out 
his sheep. " Lift up your eyes, and behold who hath created these 
things ; that bringeth out their host by number : he calleth them all 
by names." It is no mere general knowledge — general care — that 
the Great Creator possesseth and exercises. There is not a single 
star in all that starry host unnoticed, unguided, unnamed. The eye 
that seeth all, sees each as distinctly as if it alone were before it. The 
hand that guideth all, guides each as carefully as if it alone had to 
be directed by it. So is it with Jesus and the great multitude of his 
redeemed. Singling each out of that vast company, he says, "I 
have redeemed thee : I have called thee by thy name, thou art mine." 
" I have graven thy name on the palms of my hands, to be ever there 
before mine eye. To him that overcometh will I give a white stone, 
and on the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving 
he who receiveth it." Individual names are given to mark off individ- 
ual objects, to separate each, visibly and distinctly, from all othen 
of the same kind. A new island is discovered, its discoverer gives to 
it its new name. A new instrument is invented, its inventor gives to 
it its new name. In that island, as distinguished from all other 
islands, its discoverer takes ever afterwards a special interest. In 



THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 393 

chat instrument, as different from all others, a like special interest is 
taken by its inventor. Another human spirit is redeemed to God : its 
Redeemer gives to it its new name, and for ever afterwards in that 
spirit he takes a living, personal, peculiar interest : bending over it 
continually with infinite tenderness, watching each doubt, each fear, 
#acl trial, each temptation, each fall, each rising again, each conflict, 
each victory, each defeat, every movement, minute or momentous, by 
which its progress is advanced or retarded, watching each and all with 
a solicitude as special and particular as if it were upon it that the 
exclusive regards of his loving heart were fixed. 

It Avas no vague, indefinite, indiscriminate goodwill to all mankind 
that Jesus showed when here on earth. A large part of the narrative of 
his life and labors is occupied with the details of his intercourse with 
individuals, intended to set forth the special personal interest in each 
of them that he took. Philip brings Nathanael to him. Jesus says, 
" Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree, I 
saw thee." " Go, call thy husband and come hither." " I have no 
husband," the woman of Samaria answers. Jesus says, " Thou hast 
well said thou hast no husband, for thou hast had five husbands, and 
he whom thou now hast is not thy husband ; in that saidst thou truly." 
A lone, afflicted woman creeps furtively near to him, that she may 
touch but the hem of his garment ; she is healed, but must not go 
away imagining that she was unseen, unrecognized. Zaccheus climbs 
up into the sycamore, expecting simply to get a sight of him as he 
passes by. Christ comes up, stops before the tree, looks up, and says, 
" Zaccheus, make haste and come down, for to-day I must abide at 
thy house." " Our friend Lazarus sleepeth." " Simon, Simon, Satan 
hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat, but I have 
prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not." Too numerous to go on 
quoting thus, were the manifestations of personal and particular 
regard shown by Jesus before his death. And when he rose from 
the sepulchre, he rose with the same heart in him for special affec- 
tion. It was the risen Saviour who put the message into the angel's 
lips, " Go, tell the disciples and Peter that he is risen from the dead." 
And when he ascended up to heaven, he carried the same heart with 
him to the throne. " Saul, Saul, wh} r persecutes!, thou me?"' There 
was not one of those, his little ones, whoin Saul was persecuting, that 
he did not identify with himself. No vague, indefinite, indiscriminate 
superintendence is that which the great Good Shepherd still exercises 
over his flock, but a care that particularizes each separate member of 
it, and descends to the minutest incidents of their history. 

We rightly say that one great object of the incarnation was so to 



394 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

manifest the unseen Divinity, that our weak thoughts and our languid 
affections might the more easily comprehend and embrace him as 
embodied in the person of Jesus Christ the Son. But we fail to real- 
ize the full meaning, and to take home to ourselves the full comfort of 
thn Incarnation, if we regard not our Divine Eedeemer as seeing each 
>f us wherever we are as distinctly as he saw Nathanael under the 
fig-tiee, Zaccheus upon the sycamore-tree, as knowing all about our 
past history as minutely as he knew all about that of the woman by 
the well-side, sympathizing as truly and tenderly with all our spiritual 
trials and sorrows as he did with those of Peter and the churches 
whom Saul was persecuting. 

2. Christ speaks of the mutual knowledge, love, and sympathy 
which unites the Shepherd and the sheep, creating a bond between 
them of the closest and most endearing kind. " I know my sheep, 
and am known of mine, as my Father knoweth me, and as I know the 
Father." The mutual knowledge of the Shepherd and the sheep is 
likened thus to the mutual knowledge of the Father and the Son. 
The ground of the comparison cannot be in the omniscience pos- 
sessed equally by the Father and the Son, in virtue of which each 
fully knows the other, for no such faculty is possessed by the sheep ; 
and yet their knowledge of the Shepherd is said to be the same in 
kind with his knowledge of them, and both to be the same in kind 
with the Father's knowledge of the Son and the Son's knowledge of 
the Father. What possibly can be meant by this but that there is a 
bond of acquaintanceship, affection, communion, fellowship, between 
each true believer and his Saviour, such in its origin, such in its 
strength, such in its sacredness, such in its present blessedness, such in 
its glorious issues in eternity, that no earthly bond whatever — no, not 
the closest that binds man to man, human heart to human heart — can 
offer the fit or adequate symbol of it, to get which we must climb to 
those mysterious heights, to that mysterious bond by which the 
Father and the Son are united in the intimacies of eternal love? 
This bond consists in oneness of life, unity of spirit, harmony of 
desire and affection. In the spiritual world, great as the distances 
may be which divide its members, (and vast indeed is that distance 
at which any of us stand from our Redeemer,) like discerneth like 
even afar off, like draws to like, like links itself to like, truth meets 
truth, and love meets love, and holiness clings to holiness. The new- 
born soul turns instinctively to him in whom it has found its better, 
its eternal life. Known first of him, it knows him in return ; loved 
first by him, it loves him in return. He comes to take up his abode 
in it, and it hastens to take up its abode in him. He dwells in it ; it 



THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 396 

dwells in him And broken and imperfect as, on the believer's part, 
this union and communion is, yet is there in it a nearness, a sacred- 
ness, a tenderness that belongs to no other tie by which the human 
spirit can be bound. 

3. The manner in which the Good Shepherd leads his flock. " Be 
calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out ; and when he 
putteth forth his sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow 
him." The language is borrowed from pastoral life in Eastern lands ; 
and it is remarkable that in almost every point in which a resem- 
blance is traced between the office and work of the shepherd and 
that of Christ, the usages of Eastern differ from those of our West- 
ern lands. Our shepherds drive their flocks before them ; and, in 
driving, bring a strong compulsion of some kind to bear upon the 
herd. This fashion of it puts all noticing, knowing, naming, calling 
of particular sheep out of the question ; it is not an attraction from 
before, it is a propulsion from behind, that sets our flocks of sheep 
moving upon the way ; it is not the hearing of its name, it is not 
the call of its master, it is not by the sight of him going on before 
that any single sheep is induced to move onward in the path. It 
is quite different in the East ; the Eastern shepherd goes before his 
sheep he draws them after him — draws them by those ties of depen- 
dence, and trust, and affection that long years of living together have 
established between them. He calls them by their name ; they hear 
and follow. Hence the language of the Old Testament : " The Lord is 
my shepherd ; he leadeth me beside the still waters." " Thou leddest 
thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses and of Aaron." " Give 
ear, O Shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a flock " — a 
usage this of Eastern shepherd life truly and beautifully illustrative 
of the mode by which Jesus guides his people onward to the fold of 
their eternal rest ; not by fear, not by force, not by compulsion of any 
kind — no, but by love, by the attraction of his loving presence, the 
force of his winning example. No guide or pastor he like those Phar- 
isees whom Jesus had in his eye when, in contrast to them, he called 
himself the Good Shepherd — men binding heavy burdens, and laying 
them on other men's shoulders, while they would not touch them 
themselves with one of their fingers. In our blessed Lord and Mas- 
ter we have one who himself trod before us every step that he would 
have us tread, bore every burden he would have us bear, met every 
temptation he would have us meet, shared every grief he would have 
us share, did every duty he would have us do. Study it aright, and 
it will surprise you to discover over what a wide and varied field of 
human experience the example of our Saviour stretches, how difficult 



396 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

it is to find a position or experience of our common human life to 
which you may not find something answering in the life of Jesus of 
Nazareth. 

L The consummating act of his love for the sheep, and the per- 
fect voluntariness with which that act is done. "I am the Good 
Sh jpherd : the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." The 
hireling undertakes to guard the sheep as best he can. It is expected 
that he should be vigilant, alert, courageous in their defence, running 
at times, if need be, some risk even of Umb or life. But no owner of 
a flock ever bound it upon the shepherd whom he hired, as a condition 
of his office, that if ever it came to be the alternative that the sheep 
must perish, or the shepherd perish, the latter must give up his life 
to save the flock. A human life is too precious a thing to be sac- 
rificed in such a way. The owner of the flock would not give his own 
life for the sheep : he could not righteously ask his hireling to do it. 
The intrinsic difference in nature and in worth between the man and 
the sheep is such as to preclude the idea of a voluntary surrender of 
life by the one simply to preserve the other. How much in value above 
all the lives for which it was given was that of God's own eternal Son, 
we have no means of computing ; but we can see how far above all 
sacrifice that either the owner of the flock acting himself as shepherd, 
oi any under-shepherd whom he hired, ever made, or could be expected 
to make, w T as that which Jesus made when he laid down his life for the. 
sheep. Yet how freely was this done ! " I lay down my life that I 
might take it again : no man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of 
myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it 
again." Life is that mysterious thing, the giving and restoring of 
which the Creator keeps in his own hands. No skill or power of man 
ever made a new living thing. No skill or power of man ever rekin- 
dled the mystic light of life when once gone out. The power lies with 
man to lay down or take away his own life ; but, once laid down, what 
man is he that can take it up again? Yet Jesus speaks as one who 
has the recovery of his own life as much at his command as the relin- 
quishing of it — speaks of laying it down in order to take it again. He 
would have it be known, that whatever he might permit the men to 
do who had already resolved to take his life, his death would not be 
their doing, but his own ; a death undergone spontaneously on his 
part, of his own free and unconstrained choice. Most willingly, 
through sheer love and pity, out of the infinite fulness of his divine 
compassion, was he to lay down his life for the sheep, that thus they 
might have life, and have it more abundantly than they otherwise 
oould have —his death their life — his life from the dead drawing their 



THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 397 

finite and forfeited life up along with it and linking their eternity 
with his own. 

So we understand, and may attempt to illustrate this description 
by himself of himself as the Good Shepherd ; but to the men who 
first listened to it, especially to those Pharisees whose conduct aa 
shepherds it was meant to expose, how absolutely unintelligible in 
many of its parts must it have appeared! What an assumption in 
making himself the one and only door, in raising himself so high 
above all other shepherds, representing himself as possessed of 
attributes that none of them possessed, making sacrifices that none 
of them ever made ! If a shepherd gave his life for the sheep, one 
would think that the sheep would lose instead of gain; would, in 
consequence of his removal, be all the more at the mercy of the 
destroyer. But here is a shepherd, whose death is held out as not 
only protecting the sheep from death, but imparting to them a new 
life; who dies, while yet by his dying, they lose nothing — do not 
even lose him as their shepherd — for he no sooner dies than he lives 
again to resume his shepherd's office. More than obscure — ambi- 
tious, and utterly self-contradictory must this account of himself 
have appeared to the listening Pharisees, their recoil not lessened 
by Christ's dropping incidentally the hint that there were other 
sheep, not of the Jewish fold, whom he meant to bring in, so that 
there should be one fold, over which he should be the one shepherd. 
"There was a division therefore again among the Jews for these 
sayings." To many they appeared so presumptuous and inexpli- 
cable, that they said, "He hath a devil, and is mad; why hear ye 
him ?" There were others who, unable to give any explanation of 
the sayings, yet clung to the evidence of his miracles, particularly of 
the one they had just witnessed. "These are not the words of him 
that hath a devil. Can a devil open the eyes of the blind?" 

Leaving them to settle these differences among themselves, Jesus 
withdrew; and for two months — from the time of the Feast of 
Tabernacles to that of the Feast of the Dedication — the curtain 
drops over Jerusalem, and we see and hear no more of any thing 
said or done by Jesus there. Y/here and how were those two 
months spent ? Many think that our Lord must have remained in 
01 near the capital during this interval. It appears to us much more 
likely that he had returned to Galilee. We are expressly told that 
he would not walk in "Jewry because the Jews sought to kill him." 
After the formal attempt of the rulers to arrest him, and after the 
populace had taken up stones to stone him during the feast of taber- 
nacles, it seems little likely that he would remain so long a time 



398 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

within their reach and power. When next he appears in Solomon's 
porch, and the Jews gather round him, the tone of the conversation 
that ensues, in which there is so direct a reference to his declarations 
about himself, uttered at the close of the preceding festival, is best 
explained by our conceiving that this was a sudden reappearance of 
Jesus in the midst of them, when the thoughts both of himself and 
his hearers naturally reverted to the incidents of their last interview 
in the temple. " Then came the Jews round about him, and said, 
How long dost thou make us to doubt ? If thou be the Christ, tell 
us plainly." There was not a little petulance, and a large mixture 
of hypocrisy in the demand. These were not honest inquirers seek- 
ing only relief from perplexing doubts. Whatever Christ might say 
about himself, their minds about him were quite made up. They do 
not come to ask about that late discourse of his in which he had 
spoken so plainly about his being the one and only true shepherd of 
the sheep. They do not come to inquire further about that door, by 
which he had said that the true fold could alone be entered. They 
come with the one distinct and abrupt demand, that he should tell 
them plainly whether he was the Christ ; apparently implying some 
readiness on their part to believe, but only such a readiness as the 
men around the cross expressed when they exclaimed, "Let him 
come down from the cross, and we will believe." They want him to 
assert that he was the Christ. They want to get the evidence from 
his own lips on which his condemnation by the Sanhedrim could be 
grounded ; knowing besides that an express claim on his part to the 
Messiahship would alienate many even among those whose incre- 
dulity had been temporarily shaken. 

There was singular wisdom in our Lord's reply: "I told you 
before, and ye believed not." In no instance had he ever openly 
declared to these Jews of Jerusalem that he was the Christ, nor 
was he now about to affirm it, in the way that they prescribed. 
Nevertheless it was quite true that he had often told them who and 
what he was ; told enough to satisfy them that he must be either 
their long-expected Messiah or a deceiver of the people. And 
even if he had said nothing, his works had borne no ambiguous 
testimony to his character and office. But they had not received, 
they had rejected all that evidence. They wanted plain speaking, 
and now they get it, get more of it than they expected or desired, 
for Jesus not only broadly proclaims their unbelief, but reverting to 
that unwelcome discourse which was still ringing in their troubled 
ears, he tells them of the nature and the source of their unbelief: 
"Ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto 



THE GOOD SHEPHEKD. 399 

you." Without dwelling, however, upon this painful topic, one 
about which these Jews then, and we readers of the Gospel now, 
might be disposed to put many questions, to which no satisfactory 
answers from any quarter might come to us, Jesus goes on to dwell 
upon what to him, as it should be to us, was a far more grateful 
topic, the characteristics and the privileges of his own true and 
faithful flock: "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they 
follow me." That and more he had previously said while speaking 
of himself as the good shepherd, and noting some of the character- 
istics of his sheep. But now he will add something more as to the 
origin and nature, the steadfast and eternal endurance, of that new 
relationship, into which, by becoming his, all the true members of 
his spiritual flock are admitted. 

"And I give unto them eternal life." Spiritual life, life in God, 
to God, is the new fresh gift of Christ's everlasting love. To procure 
and to impart it was the great object of his mission to our earth. 
"I am come," he said, "that they might have life, and that they 
might have it more abundantly." His incarnation was the man- 
ifestation of this life in all its fulness in his own person. " The life 
was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show 
unto you, that eternal life which was with the Father, and was 
manifested unto us." "In him was life, and the life was the light 
of men." The life not flowing from the light, but the light from the 
life, even as our Lord himself hath said, "I am the light of the 
world; he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall 
have the light of life." 

There are gifts of Christ's purchase and bestowment that he 
makes over at once, and in a full completed form to the believer, 
such as pardon of sin, acceptance with God, the title to the heavenly 
inheritance. But the chief gift of his love — the life of faith, of love, 
of meek endurance, of self-sacrificing service and suffering — comes 
not to any of us now in such a form. It is but the germ of it that 
is planted in the heart. Its history here is but that of the seed as it 
lies in the damp, cold ear oh, as it rots and moulders beneath the 
sod, waiting the sunshine and the shower, a large part of it cor- 
rupting, decaying, that out of the very bosom of rottenness, out 
of the very heart of death, the new life may spring. Could but an 
intelligent consciousness descend with the seed into the earth, 
and attend the different processes that go on there, we should 
have an emblem of the too frequent consciousness that accom- 
panies those first stages of the spiritual life, in which, amid doubts 
and fears, surrounded by the besetting elements of darkness, weak- 



£00 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

ness, corruption, death, the soul struggles onward into the life ef &f- 
lasting. 

But weak as it is in itself, in its first beginnings, this spiritual life 
partakes of the immortality, the immutability, of the source from 
which it springs. It is this which bestows such preciousness on it. 
Put into a man's hand the seed of a flower-bearing or fruit-bearing 
plant, it is not the bare bulb he grasps he thanks you for. It would 
have but little worth in his eyes were it to remain for ever in the 
condition in which he gets it. It is the capacity for after growth, 
the sure promise of the living flower and fruit that lies enwrapped 
within, that gives it, all its value. Slowly but surely does the myste- 
rious principle of life that lodges in it operate, till the flower expands 
before the eye and the ripened fruit drops into the hand. So is it 
with the seed of the divine life lodged by the Spirit in the soul; with 
this difference, that for it there is to be no autumn season of decay 
and death. It is to grow, and grow for ever, ever expanding, ever 
strengthening, ever maturing; its perpetuity due to the infinite and 
unchangeable grace and power of Him on whom it wholly hangs. 
Strictly speaking, our natural life is as entirely dependent on God as 
our spiritual one. But there is this great distinction between the 
two: the one may run its course, too often does so, without any 
abiding sense on the part of him who is passing through it of his 
absolute and continued dependence on the great Lifegiver; the 
other cannot do so. Its essence lies in the ever consciousness of its 
origin, its continuance in the preservation of that consciousness. 
You may try to solve the phenomena of life in its lower types and 
forms, by imagining that a separate independent element or prin- 
ciple is bestowed at first by the Creator, which is left afterwards, 
apart from any connection with him, to develop its latent inherent 
qualities. You cannot solve thus the life that is hidden with Christ 
in God. Apart from him who gave it being, it has no vitality. It 
begins in a sense of entire indebtedness to him ; it continues only so 
long as that sense of indebtedness is sustained. It is not within 
itself that the securities for its continuance are to be found. 

" My sheep shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them 
out of my hand. My Father which gave them me is greater than 
all, and none shall pluck them out of my Father's hands." Are we 
not entitled to gather from these words the comforting assurance 
that all who by the secret communications of his grace have had 
ttiis life transfused into their souls, shall be securely and eternally 
upheld by the mighty power of Christ, so that they shall never 
|>erish? not so upheld, whatever they afterwards may be or do, not 



THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 401 

so upheld that the thought of their security may slacken their own 
diligence or tempt them to transgress, but so that the very sense of 
their having such a presence and such a power as that of Jesus ever 
with them to protect and bless, shall operate as a new spring and 
impulse to all holy activities, and shall keep from ever becoming or 
ever doing that whereby his friendship would be finally and for ever 
forfeited and lost. Do we feel the first faint beatings of the new life 
in our hearts? Do we fear that these may be so checked and 
hardened as to be finally and for ever stopped ? Let us not think of 
our weakness, but of Christ's strength ; of our faith, but of his faith- 
fulness; of the firmness of our hold of him, but of the firmness of 
his hold of us. The hollow of that hand of our Eedeemer is the 
one safe place for us into which to put our sinful soul. Not into 
the hand of the Father, as the great and holy lawgiver, would the 
spirit in the first exercises of penitence and faith venture to thrust 
itsolf, lest out of that hand it should indignantly be flung, and scat- 
tered and lost should be the wealth of its immortality. It is into 
th( hand of the Son, the Saviour, that it puts itself. Yet as soon as 
ever it does so, the other hand, that of the Father, closes over it, as 
if the redoubled might of Omnipotence waited and hastened to guard 
the treasure. " Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. 
. . . . No man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand." 
The believer's life is hid "with Christ." Far up beyond all reach of 
danger this of itself would place it. But farther still, it is hid " with 
Christ in God." Does this not, as it were, double the distance, and 
place the breath of two infinites between it and the possibility of 
perishing ? 

"I and my Father are one." It was on his saying so that they 
took up stones again to stone him. He might have claimed to bo 
Christ, but there had been nothing blasphemous in his doing so. 
Many of the people — some even of the rulers — believed, or half 
suspected that he was the Messiah; yet it never was imagined that 
in setting forth such a claim Jesus was guilty of a crime for which 
he might righteously be stoned to death. The Jews were not 
expecting the divine being to appear as their Messiah. They were 
looking only for one in human nature, of ordinary human parentage, 
to come to be their king. It is not till he speaks of his hand being 
of equal power with the Father's to protect — till he grounds that 
equality of power upon unity of nature — till he says that he and the 
Father are one — that they take up stones to stone him. And their 
words explain their actions. While yet the stones are in their 
hands, Jesus says to them, "Many good works have I showed you 

Uf«or.«Hiat. 26 



402 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

of my Father, for which of these works do ye stone me?" Reach 
for the moment to concede any thing as to the character of his 
works, they answer, "For a good work we stone thee not, but for 
blasphemy, and because that thou being a man, makest thysel/ 
God." They understood him as asserting his divinity. Had they 
misunderstood his words, how easy it had been for Christ to correct 
their error — to tell them that he was no blasphemer as they thought 
him; that in calling himself the Son of God he did not mean to 
claim equality with the Father. He did not do so. He quotes, 
indeed, in the first instance, a sentence from their own Scriptures, in 
which their judges were called gods; but he proceeds immediately 
thereafter to separate himself from, and to exalt himself above those 
to whom because of their office, and because of the word of God 
coming to them, the epithet was once or twice applied, and reasons 
from the less to the greater. He says, "If he called them gods, 
unto whom the word of God came, say ye of him whom the Father 
hath sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because 
I said, I am the Son of God?" At first there was some ambiguity 
in the defence. Although intimating that the appellation might be 
applied with more propriety to him than to any of their old judges, 
it might be on the ground only of a higher office or higher mission 
than theirs that Jesus was reasoning. They listen without inter* 
rupting him. But when he adds — "If I do not the works of my 
Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, yet 
believe the works : that ye may know, and believe that the Father is 
in me and I in him," they see that he is taking up the same ground 
as at the first — is claiming to be equal with the Father — is making 
himself God ; and so once again they seek to take him, to deal with 
him as a blasphemer; but he escaped out of their hands. That 
neither upon this nor upon any other occasion of the same kind did 
our Lord complain of being condemned mistakenly when regarded 
as being guilty of blasphemy, nor offer the explanation which at 
once would have set aside the charge, we regard as the clearest of 
all proofs that the Jews were not in error in interpreting his sayings 
as they did. 

We take then, our Lord's wonderful sayings at the feast of dedi- 
cation as asserting the essential unity of nature and attribute* 
between himself and the Father, and as thus assuring us of th* 
perfect and everlasting security and well-being of all who put thei* 
eouls for keeping into his hand. 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 402a 

OUTLINE STUDIES. 

It is very difficult to arrange the events in the life of Christ at this 
time in chronological order. The view taken by Dr. Hanna that 
Christ returned to Galilee just preceding the first period of the Peraean 
Ministry is favored by strong writers and appears best fitted to meet 
the situation. 

When our Lord's last journey from Galilee to Jerusalem began, 
he entered northeastern Samaria; but not being received by the 
people of a certain village, it is thought that he went back into Galilean 
territory and then eastward into Peraea. It is apparently the only 
province clearly open to him, and as the time has come when his Mes- 
sianic character is to be proclaimed, he sends out seventy of his dis- 
ciples into every place whither he himself is about to come. When 
they return from their mission, Christ's final word for them is that 
they should rejoice that their names are written in heaven. 

If there is a similarity in the features attending the ministry in 
Peraea to the early stages of that in Galilee, it is probably due to the 
fact that the circumstances were alike. But there are other particulars 
in which there is a sharp distinction. Christ's prevision and pre- 
diction of the rapidly approaching and tragic end are now distinct and 
outspoken. His cures, as the two upon the Sabbath, are wrought 
upon his own free movement, and not upon application or appeal. 

This period of the Persean Ministry is marked especially by 
parables, there being not less than ten of them, and several are among 
the most expressive, beautiful, and fruitful of Christ's whole ministry, 
as the Lost Sheep, the Lost Piece of Money, the Prodigal Son, Dives 
and Lazarus, the Pharisee and the Publican, and the Good Samaritan. 
As compared with the earlier parables, spoken during the Galilean 
Ministry, which were largely parables of the kingdom, the parables 
given during the Peraean Ministry are chiefly parables of grace, though 
some, like that of Dives and Lazarus, by contrast are parables of judg- 
ment. Grace has been defined as mercy, kindness, love, that one 
does not deserve. Viewed in this light, the parable of the Prodigal Son 
is supreme among the parables of grace. With what graciousness 
and charm also is the parable of the Good Samaritan irradiated! It 
has inspired innumerable deeds of compassion, sympathy, and humanity. 
Very fittingly such parables as these are found in this Penvan section 
of Luke, for this soulful Greek helper of Paul and beloved physician 
seems instinctively to have found that which possesses spiritual nobility 
and winsomeness, and to have incorporated such material in his Gospel. 

Again in this special time may be noticed the Lord's prayer, as 
given in response to the words, " Lord, teach us to pray." 



402& THE LIFE OF CHRIST 

PART III. MAIN MINISTRY IN JUDEA AND PER^A. 
Study 13. First Period of Per^ean Ministry. 

(1) Christ's closing visit to Galilee 403, 404 

a. Small visible results of his work 403 

b. Christ has not met popular expectation 403 

c. His adversaries take advantage of his lessening fame 403 

d. His disciples rise to true faith in him 404 

e. On both sides the time for closing action has come 404 

(2) Christ's last journey to Jerusalem 405-407 

a. His messengers find the Samaritans hostile 404 

b. He rebukes the indignant disciples who would call down fire from 

heaven 405, 406 

c. Words for the hasty, boastful, depressed, reluctant 406, 407 

d. Another route chosen 407 

e. Christ prepares to declare his mission 407 

(3) The sending out of the seventy 407-411 

a. Publicity insured for the Messianic proclamation 408 

b. Comparison of the two commissions 408, 409 

c. Joyful return of the seventy 409, 410 

d. True cause for joy 410 

(4) Per^ean period and its record in Luke 411-417 

a. Events occurring between the Feast of Tabernacles and the Passover. 411 

b. Details supplied by St. Luke and St. John 412 

c. Jesus avoids Jewry 413, 414 

d. Conjectural route in Peraea 414, 415 

e. Resemblance to the work in Galilee 415, 416 

/. Jesus sends a message to Herod 416, 417 

g. Peculiar tone noticeable in the Peraean periods 416-420 

(5) Features of this Perjean work 418-420 

a. Sabbath day cures 418, 419 

b. Christ foretells his coming experiences at Jerusalem 419 

c. He warns of his appearance for judgment 419, 420 

d. He declares that the kingdom of God is within 420 

(6) Parables spoken in Peraea 421-439 

a. Ten parables named , 421 

b. Christ declines to judge in a property dispute 421, 422 

c. An example of non-intervention 423 

d. He warns against covetousness 424 

e. The barren fig-tree prophecy and fulfillment 424-426 

/. Parable of the Great Supper 426, 427 

g. Three parables of Grace 427-429 

h. Parables of Unjust Steward and Unjust Judge 429-431 

i. Parable of the Good Samaritan 431-439 

(7) The Lord's Prayer 439-447 

a. The request, " Lord, teach us to pray " 439 

b. Features of the prayer Christ gave 440-445 

c. Prayer to be made to the Father 446, 447 






LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 10i 

VIM. 

NC1DENTS IN OUR Lord's LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM.* 

interval between the feast of tabernacles and the feast of dedication 
that Christ's last visit to Galilee was paid — his farewell taken of the 
home of his youth — the scenes of his chief labors. Those labors 
had lasted for about two years, and in them an almost ceaseless 
activity had been displayed. He had made many circuits through 
all the towns and villages of the district, performed innumerable 
miracles, and delivered innumerable addresses to larger or smaller 
audiences. Yet the visible results had not been great. He had 
attached twelve men to him as his constant and devoted attendants. 
There were four or five hundred more ready to acknowledge them- 
selves as his disciples. A vast excitement and a large measure of 
public sympathy had at first been awakened. Multitudes were ready 
to hail him as the great expected deliverer. But as the months rolled 
on, and there was nothing in his character or teaching or doings, 
answering to their ideas of what this deliverer was to be and do, 
they got incredulous — their incredulity fanned into strength by a 
growing party headed by the chief Pharisees, who openly rejected 
and reviled him. There had not been much in his earlier instruc- 
tions to which exception could be taken, but when he began at a 
later period to speak of himself as the bread of life, and to declare 
that unless men ate his flesh and drank his blood they had no life 
in them, his favor with the populace declined, and they were even 
ready to believe all that his enemies insinuated, as to his being 
a profane man — an enemy to Moses and to their old laws. Not 
a few were still ready to regard him as a prophet, perhaps the 
forerunner of the Messiah; but outside the small circle of his imme- 
diate attendants there were few if any who recognised him as the 
Christ of God. Of this decline in favor with the multitude his 
adversaries greedily availed themselves, and Galilee was fast becom- 
ing as dangerous a home for him as Judea. Meanwhile his own 
disciples had been slowly awakening from their first low and earthly 
notions of him — their eyes slowly opened to the recognition of the 
great mystery of his character, as being no other than the incarnate 
Son of God. Till they were lifted up above their old Jewish notions 
of the Messiah — till they came to perceive how singular was the 

» Luke 9 : 51-6? • 10 : 1-24. 



404 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

relationship in which Jesus stood to the Father, how purely spiritual 
were the ends which he came to accomplish — he did not, could not, 
intelligibly speak to them of his approaching death, resurrection, 
and ascension. The confession of Peter in the name of all the rest 
that he was the Christ, the Son of God, marked at once the arrival 
of the period at which Jesus began so to speak, and the close of his 
labors in Galilee. On both sides, on the part alike of friends and 
enemies, things were ripening for the great termination, the time 
had come ''that he should be received up," and "he steadfastly set 
his face to go up to Jerusalem." 

Starting from Capernaum and travelling southward by the route 
on the west side of the Jordan, he sends messengers before his face, 
who enter a village of the Samaritans. We remember how gladly 
he had been welcomed two years before in one town of that district, 
how ready the inhabitants of Sychar had been to hail him as the 
Messiah, and we may wonder that now the people of a Samaritan 
village should so resist his entrance and reject his claims. It may 
have been that they were men of a different spirit from that of the 
Sycharites. But it may also have arisen from this — that the Samar- 
itans at first had hoped that if he were indeed the Messiah, he 
would decide in favor of their temple and its worship, but that now s 
when they see him going up publicly to the feasts at Jerusalem, and 
sanctioning by his presence the ordinances of the sanctuary there, 
their feelings had changed from those of friendliness into those of 
hostility. However it was, the men of this village — the first Samar- 
itan one that lay in the Lord's path — "would not receive him, 
because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem." Some 
marked expressions of their unfriendliness had been given, some 
open indignities flung upon his messengers, of which James and 
John were witnesses. These two disciples had been lately with their 
Master on the Mount of Transfiguration, and had seen there the 
homage that the great prophet Elijah had rendered to him. They 
were now in the very region of Elijah's life and labors. They had 
crossed the head of the great plain, at one end of which stood 
Jezreel, and at the other the heights of Carmel. The events of the 
last few weeks had been filling their minds with vague yet un- 
bounded hopes. Their Master had thrown off much of his reserve, 
had shown them his glory on the mount, had spoken to them as he 
had never done before, had told them of the strange things that 
were to happen at Jerusalem, had made them feel by the very man- 
ner* of his entrance upon this last journey from Galilee, that the 
crisis of his history was drawing on. He courts secrecy no longer, 




Going up to Jerusali 



LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 405 

He sends messengers before his face. He is about to make a public 
triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Yet here are Samaritans who 
openly despise him — will not give him even a night's lodging in 
their village. The fervid attachment to Jesus that beats in the 
hearts of James and John kindles into indignation at this treatment. 
Their indignation turns into vengeful feeling towards the men who 
were guilty of such conduct. They look around. The heights of 
Carmel remind them what Elias had done to the false prophets, and 
fancying that they were fired with the same spirit, and had a still 
weightier wrong to avenge, they turn to Jesus, saying, "Lord, wilt 
thou that we command fire to come down from heaven and consume 
them, even as Elias did?" They expect Jesus to enter fully and 
approvingly into the sentiment by which they are animated; they 
know it springs from love to him; they are so confident that their3 
is a pure and holy zeal, that they never doubt that the fire from 
heaven waits to be its minister ; they want only to get permission to 
use the bolts of heavenly vengeance that they believe are at their 
command. How surprised they must have been when Jesus turned 
and rebuked them, saying, " Ye know not what manner of spirit ye 
are of; for the Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to 
save them." 

Jesus is not now here for any personal insult to be offered — any 
personal injury to be inflicted ; but still he stands represented, as he 
himself has taught us, in the persons of all his little ones, in the 
body of his church, the company of the faithful. Among these little 
ones within that company, how many have there been, how many 
are there still who cherish the spirit of James and John? who as 
much need our Lord's rebuke, and who would be as much surprised 
at that rebuke being given ? There is no one thicker cloak beneath 
which human passions hide themselves, than that of religious zeal — 
zeal for Christ's truth, Christ's cause, Christ's kingdom. Once let a 
man believe, (a belief for which he may have much good reason, for 
it is not spurious but real zeal that we are now speaking of,) once let 
a man believe that a true and ardent attachment to Christ, a true 
and ardent zeal to promote the honor of his name, the interests of 
his kingdom, glows within him, and it is perfectly astonishing to 
what extent the consciousness of this may delude him — shut his eye 
from seeing, his heart from feeling — that, under the specious guise 
of such love and zeal, he is harboring and indulging some of the 
meanest and darkest passions of our nature — wounded pride, irrita 
tion at opposition, combativeness, the sheer love of fighting, of hav- 
ing an adversary of some kind to grapple with and overcome 



40fi THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

personal hatred, the deep thirst to be avenged. These and such 
Like passions, did they not in the days gone by rankle in the breasts 
of persecutors and controversialists? of men who claimed to be 
animated in all they said and did by a supreme regard to the honor 
of their Heavenly Master ? These and such like passions, do they 
not rankle still in the hearts of many, now that the hand of the 
persecutor has to so great an extent been tied up, and the pen of the 
controversialist restrained — prompting still the uncharitable judg- 
ment, the spiteful remark, the harsh and cruel treatment ? Christ's 
holy character and noble cause may have insults offered, deep 
injuries done to them ; but let us be assured that it is not by getting 
angry at those who are guilty of such conduct, not by maligning 
their character, not by the visitation of pains and penalties of any 
kind upon them, that these insults and injuries are to be avenged; 
no, but by forbearance and gentleness, and love and pity — by feeling 
and acting towards all such men as our blessed Lord and Master 
felt and acted towards the inhabitants of that Samaritan village. 

Perhaps it was the gentle but firm manner in which Jesus 
rebuked the proposal of the two disciples — telling them how igno- 
rant they were of the true state of their own hearts — that led the 
Evangelist to introduce here the narrative of those cases in which 
our Lord dealt with other moods and tempers of the human spirit 
which produce often the same self-ignorance, and too often seriously 
interfere with a faithful following of Christ. One man comes — a 
type of the hasty, the impetuous, the inconsiderate — and, volunteer- 
ing discipleship, he proclaims, "Lord, I will follow whithersoever 
thou goest." Boastful, self-ignorant, self-confident, he has not 
stopped to think what following of Jesus means, or whither it will 
carry him — unprepared for the difficulties and trials of that disciple- 
ship which he is in such haste to take on. The quieting reply, 
" Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of 
man hath not where to lay his head," sends him back to reflect 
somewhat more intelligently and deeply on what his offer and 
promise imply. Another is asked by Christ himself to follow him ; 
but he says, " Suffer me first to go and bury my father :" a type of 
the depressed, the melancholic — of those whom the very griefs and 
sorrows of this life and the sad duties to which these call them stand 
as a barrier between them and the services, the sacrifices, the com- 
forts and consolations of the faith. Such need to be taught that 
there is a duty above that of self-indulgence in any human grief; 
and so to this man the Lord's peremptory reply is, "Let the dead 
bury their dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom of God." A 



LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 407 

third man asks, that before obeying the Saviour's call, he might be 
allowed first to go and bid his friends and relatives farewell : a very 
natural request — one in which we should imagine there was little 
that was wrong; but the searcher of all hearts sees that there is a 
hankering here after the old familiar way of living — a reluctance of 
some kind in some degree to take the new yoke on; and so the 
warning is conveyed to him in the words, "No man having put his 
hand to the plough and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God." 
So varied was the spirit in which men approached Jesus, in whom 
some readiness to follow him appeared, so varied was the manner in 
which our Lord dealt with such, suiting himself to each particular 
case with a nicety of adjustment of which in our ignorance we are 
but imperfect judges, but enabling us to gather from the whole that 
it is a deliberate, a cheerful, an entire and unconditional surrender of 
the heart and life that Jesus asks from all who would be truly and 
for ever his. 

Eejected by the Samaritans, Jesus turned to another village and 
chose another route to Jerusalem, in all likelihood the well-known 
and most frequented one leading through Persea, on the east side of 
the Jordan. In prosecuting this journey, he "appointed other 
seventy also, and sent them two and two before his face into every 
city and place whither he himself would come." Our Lord had 
gathered around him in passing from Capernaum to Samaria almost 
the entire body of his Galilean discipleship. It could scarcely fur- 
nish more men than were sent forth on this important mission. 
Every available disciple of suitable age and character was enlisted in 
the service. It can scarcely be imagined that they were employed 
for no other purpose than to provide suitable accommodation before- 
hand for their Master. Theirs was a higher and far more important 
errand. For the wisest reasons Jesus had hitherto avoided any publk 
proclamation of his Messiahship. He had left it to his words and 
deeds to tell the people who and what he was. He had not long 
before this time, charged his apostles " that they should tell no man 
that he was Jesus the Christ." Matt. 16:20. But the time had 
come for his throwing aside this reserve — for seeking rather than 
shunning publicity — for letting all men know, not only that the king- 
dom had come, but that he, the head of that kingdom, the Christ, 
die Son of David, the king of Israel, was in the midst of them. 
Before his depar^re from among them, the Israelitish nation was 
to have this proclaimed through all its borders. This was to be tho 
peculiar distinction of his last journeyings towards the Holy City — 
th^t all. Ang upon their course his Messianic character should !hj 



408 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

publicly proclaimed, that so a last opportunity for receiving on 
rejecting hini might be afforded. And how could this have been 
better effected than by the mission of the seventy? By the advance 
of so many men two by two before him, the greatest publicity must 
have been given to all his movements. In every place and city the 
roice of his forerunners would summon forth the people to be wait- 
iug his approach. The deputies themselves could scarcely fail to 
feel how urgent and important the duty was which was committed to 
their hands. Summoning them around him before he sent them forth, 
Jesus addressed to them instructions almost identical with those 
addressed to the twelve at the time of their inauguration as his 
apostles. The address to the twelve, as reported by St. Matthew, 
(chap. 10,) was longer, bore more of the character of an induction to 
a permanent office, carried in it allusions to duties to be done, perse- 
cutions to be endured, promises to be fulfilled, in times that were to 
follow the removal of the Lord; but so far as that first short mission 
of the twelve and this mission of the seventy were concerned, the 
instructions were almost literally the same. Both were to go forth 
in the same character, vested with the same powers to discharge the 
same office in the same way ; to the rejecters and despisers of both 
the same guilt was attached, and upon them the. same woes were 
denounced. We notice, indeed, these slight differences : that the pro- 
hibition laid upon the twelve not to go into the way of the Gentiles, 
nor into any city of the Samaritans, is now withdrawn, and that the 
gift of miraculous power is seemingly more limited as committed tc 
the seventy, being restricted nominally to the healing of the sick. But 
fchese scarcely affect the question when comparison is made between 
the commissions given to the tw T elve and to the seventy, as employed 
respectively on the two temporary missions on which Jesus sent 
them forth. The result of that comparison is, that no real distinc- 
tion of any importance can be drawn between the two. Does this 
not serve, when duly weighed, to stamp with far greater significance 
than is ordinarily attached to it the mission of the seventy — raising 
it to the same platform with that of the apostles? It is quite true 
that the apostles w r ere to be apostles for life, and the seventy were 
to have no permanent standing or office of any kind in the church. 
But it was equally true that in their distinctively apostolic character 
and office the twelve w T ere to have — indeed, could have no successors. 
If, then, the commissions and the directions given to them are to be 
taken as guides to those who were afterwards to hold office in the 
ehurch, the commission and directions given to the seven uy may 
equally bo regarded as given for the guidance of the membership of 



^ 



LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 409 

the church at large; this, the great, the abiding lesson that their 
employment by Jesus carries with it — that it is not to ministers or 
ordained officers of the church alone that the duty pertains of 
spreading abroad among those around them the knowledge of Christ 
To the whole church of the living God, to each individual member 
thereof, the great commission comes, " Go thou and make the 
Saviour known." As the Father sent him, Jesus sends all who own 
and love him on the same errand of mercy. Originally the church 
of Christ was one large company of missionaries of the cross, each 
member feeling that to him a portion — differing it may be largely 
both in kind and sphere from that assigned to others, but still a por- 
tion — of the great task of evangelizing the world was committed; 
and it will be just in proportion as the community of the faithful, 
through all its parts, in all its members, comes to recognise this to 
be its function, and attempts to execute it, that the expansive power 
that once belonged to it will return to it again ; and not so much by 
organized societies or the work of paid deputies, as by the living 
power of individual pity, sympathy, and love, spirit after spirit will 
be drawn into the fold of our Redeemer, and his kingdom be en- 
larged upon the earth. 

Where the seventy went, into what places and cities they entered, 
how they were received, what spiritual good was effected by them, 
all this is hidden from our view. The sole brief record of the result 
of their labors is what is told us about their return. They came 
back rejoicing. One thing especially had struck them, and of this 
only they make mention — that, though they had not been told of 
it beforehand, the very devils had been subject unto them through 
their Master's name. They were pleased, perhaps somewhat proud, 
that what nine of the Lord's own apostles had failed in doing they 
had done. Jesus tells them that his eye had been on them in their 
progress — that he had seen what they could not see — how the 
powers of the invisible world had been moved, and Satan had fallen 
as lightning from heaven. He tells them that it was no temporary 
poAver this with which they had been invested — that instead of be- 
ing diminished it would afterwards be enlarged till it covered and 
brought beneath its sway all the power of the enemy. But there 
was a warning he had to give them. He saw that their minds and 
hearts were too much occupied by the mere exercise of power — by 
La most striking and tangible results of the exercise of that power. 
Knowing how faithless an index what is done by any agent is of 
what that agent himself is, of his real worth and value in the sight 
of God, he checks so far their joy by saying, "Notwithstanding, iu 



HO THE LIFE OF OHEIST. 

this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather 
rejoice because your names are written in heaven." There is a book 
of remembrance in the heavens, the Lamb's book of life, in which 
the names of all his true and faithful followers are written. It may 
be a great thing to have one's name inscribed in large, enduring 
'etters in the roll of those who have done great things for Christ and 
for Christ's cause upon this earth ; but that earthly register does not 
correspond with the one that is kept above. There are names to be 
found in the one that will not be met with in the other. There are 
names which shine bright in the one that appear but faintly lumi- 
nous in the other. There are names that have never been entered in 
the one that beam forth with a heavenly brilliance in the other. 
The time comes when over the one the waters of oblivion shall pass, 
and its records be all wiped away. The time shall never come when 
the names that shall at last be found written in the other shall be 
blotted out. 

The joy of the disciples had an impure earthly element in it 
which needed correction. No such element was in the joy which the 
intelligence that the seventy brought with them kindled in the 
Saviour's breast. He was the man of sorrows; a load of inward 
unearthly grief lay heavy on his heart. But out of that very grief— 
the grief that he endured for the sinful world he came to save — there 
broke a joy — the purest, the subliniest, the most blissful — that felt 
by him when he saw that the great ends of his mission were being 
accomplished, and that the things belonging to their eternal peace 
were being revealed to the souls of men. "In that hour Jesus 
rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven 
and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and pru- 
dent, and hast revealed thorn unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it 
seemed good in thy sight." Once before Jesus had offered up the 
same thanksgiving, in the same words, to the Father. We sought 
then to enter a little into its meaning.* Now from the very repeti- 
tion of it let us learn how fixed the order is, and how grateful we 
should be that it is so — that it is to the simple, the humble, the 
teachable, the childlike in heart and spirit, that the blessed revela- 
tion cometh. 

Blessed we have called it, taking the epithet from Christ's own 
lips ; for after he had offered up that thanksgiving to his Father, he 
turned to his disciples and said to them privately, "Blessed are the 
eyes which see the things that you see: for I tell you that many 
prophets and kings have desired to see those things which ye see, 
* See "Ministry in Galilee," p. 235 seq. 



OUR LORD'S MINISTRY IN PER^A. 411 

and have not seen them, and to hear those things which ye hear> 
and have not heard them." 

One closing remark upon the position in the spiritual kingdom 
here tacitly assumed or openly claimed by Christ. He prefaced his 
instructions to the seventy by saying, "The harvest truly is greatj 
but the laborers are few : pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest 
that he would send forth laborers into his harvest." Who was the 
Lord of the harvest, to whom these prayers of his disciples were to 
be addressed ? Does he not tell them when he himself immediately 
thereafter proceeds to send forth some laborers, instructing them 
how the work in the great harvest field was to bo carried on? 
Parting from Galilee he casts a lingering glance behind upon its 
towns and villages — Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum. Who 
shall explain to us wherein the exceeding privileges of these cities 
consisted, and wherein their exceeding guilt ? Who shall vindicate 
the sentence that Jesus passed, the woes that he denounced upon 
them, if he was not the Son of God, into whose hands the judgment 
of the earth hath been committed? "I beheld," said Jesus, "Satan 
as lightning fall from heaven." Was the vision a true one? If 
so, what kind of eye was it that saw it? "All things are delivered 
to me of my Father ; and no man knoweth who the Son is but the 
Father, and who the Father is but the Son, and he to whom the Son 
will reveal him." With what approach to truth or to propriety 
could language like this be used by any human, any created being? 
So is it continually here and there along the track of his earthly 
sojourn, the hidden glory bursts through the veil that covers it, and 
in the full majesty of the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-judging, all- 
directing One — Jesus of Nazareth presents himself to the eye of 
faith. 



IX. 

Our Lord's Ministry in Per^a,* 

The feast of tabernacles, at which St. John tells us that Jesus 
was present, was held in the end of October. The succeeding pass- 
over, at which our Lord was crucified, occurred in the beginning 
of April. Between the two there intervened five months. Had we 
depended alone upon the information given us by the first two Evan- 
gelists, we should have knoAvn nothing of what happened in this 

* Luke 9 : 51 to Luke 18 : 16. 



412 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

interval beyond the fact that, when his ministry in Galilee was over, 
Christ went up to Jerusalem to die there. They tell us of two 01 
three incidents which occurred at the close of this last journey, but 
leave us altogether in the dark as to any preceding visit to Jerusalem 
or journeyings and labors in any other districts of the land. True 
to his particular object of giving us the details of Christ's ministry 
in Judea, St. John enables us so far to fill up this blank as to insert * 
1. The appearance at the feast of tabernacles; 2. The appearance 
at the feast of dedication, held in the latter end of December; 3. A 
retirement immediately after the feast to Persea, the region beyond 
the Jordan; 4. A summons back to Bethany upon the occasion of 
the death of Lazarus ; 5. A retreat to " a country near to the wilder- 
ness, into a city called Ephraim;" and 6. A coming up to Bethany 
and Jerusalem six days before the Passover. These cover, however, 
but a small portion of the five months. At the first of the two 
feasts Jesus was not more than four or five, at the second, not more 
than eight days in Jerusalem. His stay at Bethany, when he came 
to raise Lazarus from the dead, was cut short by the conspiracy to 
put him to death. Not more than a fortnight out of the five months 
is thus accounted for as having been passed in Jerusalem and its 
neighborhood. Where then was spent the remaining portion of the 
time? The gospel of St. Luke and it alone enables us to answer 
these questions. There is a large section of this gospel — from the 
close of the 9th to near the middle of the 18th chapter — which is 
occupied with this period, and which stands by itself, having noth- 
ing parallel to it in any other of the Evangelists. This section com- 
mences with the words, "And it came to pass, when the time was 
come that he should be received up, he steadfastly set his face to go 
to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before his face : and they went 
and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him. ' 
Luke 9 : 51, 52. St. Matthew describes what is obviously the same 
event — our Lord's farewell to Galilee — in these words: "And it came 
to pass, that when Jesus had finished these sayings, he departed from 
Galilee, and came into the coasts of Judea beyond Jordan." Matt. 
19:1. And similarly St. Mark, of the same movement, says, "And 
he arose from thence, and cometh into the coasts of Judea by the 
farther side of Jordan." Mark 10 : 1. In the same chapters, and but 
a few verses after those in which these announcements are made, 
both St. Matthew and St. Mark relate the incident of little children 
having been brought to Jesus. But in the gospel of St. Luke, the 
record of this incident, instead of following so closely upon the 
notice of the departure from Galilee, does not come in till the close 



OUR LORD'S MINISTRY IN PERiEA. 413 

of the entire section already alluded to — so many as eight chapters 
intervening. From that point the three narratives become again 
coincident, and run on together. We have thus so much as a third 
part of the entire narrative of St. Luke, and that continuous— to 
which, so far as the sequence of the story goes, there is nothiuj? 
that corresponds in any of the other gospels. 

In this part of St. Luke's gospel there are so few notices of time 
and place, that had we it alone before us, our natural conclusion 
would be that it described continuously the different stages of one 
long journey from Galilee up through Peraea to Jerusalem. Taking 
it, however, in connection with the information supplied to us by St. 
John, we become convinced that it includes all the journeyings to and 
fro which took place between the time when Jesus finally left Galilee 
to the time when he was approaching Jericho, on going up to his last 
passover. But how are we to distribute the narrative so as to make 
its different parts fit in with the different visits to Jerusalem and its 
neighborhood related by St. John? Our first idea here would be to 
start with identifying the final departure from Galilee, described by 
St. Luke, with the going up to the feast of tabernacles, as related by 
St. John. Looking, however, somewhat more closely at the two nar- 
ratives, we are persuaded that they do not refer to the same journey. 
In the one, public messengers were sent before Christ's face to pro 
claim and prepare for his approach ; in the other, he went up, " not 
openly, but, as it were, in secret." The one was slow, prolonged by 
a large circuit through many towns and villages ; the other was rapid — 
Jesus waited behind till all his brethren and friends had departed, 
and then suddenly appeared at Jerusalem in the midst of the feast 
Did Jesus then return to Galilee immediately after the feast of the 
tabernacles, and was it in the course of the two months that elapsed 
between the two festivals that the first part of the journey described 
by St. Luke was undertaken ; or was it not till after the feast of dedi- 
cation that the last visit to Galilee and the final departure from it 
look place? The absolute silence of St. John as to any such return 
to Galilee, and the unbroken continuity of his account of what hap- 
pened at the two feasts, seem to militate against the former of these 
suppositions. We- remember, however, that such silence is not 
peculiar to this case — that there is a similar instance of a visit paid 
to Galilee between the time of the occurrences, reported respectively 
in the fifth and sixth chapters of St. John's gospel, of which not the 
slightest trace is to be discovered there. We remember that if Jesus 
did remain in Judea between the feasts, it must have been in conceal- 
ment, for we are told of this very period, that he would not walk in 



4U THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Jewry because the Jews sought to kill him. John 7 : 1. We remember 
that St. John speaks of his going to Persea after the feast of dedica- 
tion is if it were one following upon another that had recently pre- 
ceded it, "He went away again beyond Jordan." John 10:40. We 
reflect besides that if it were not till the beginning of January that 
the journey from Galilee commenced, there would be but little room 
for all the occurrences detailed in these eight chapters of St. Luke's 
gospel; and we accept it as being much the more likely thing that 
Jesus did retire from Judea to Galilee instantly after the close of the 
feast of tabernacles, and it was then that the series of incidents com- 
menced, the sole record of which is preserved to us by the third evan- 
gelist. This, of course, implies that we break down the portion of his 
narrative devoted to the journeys to Jerusalem into portions corre- 
sponding with the interval between the two festivals, and those between 
ihe latter of these and the visit to Bethany. This might plausibly 
enough be done by fixing upon what appears to be something like 
one break in the narrative, occurring at chap. 13 : 22, and something 
like another at chap. 17:11. Without resting much upon this, let us 
(distribute its parts as we may) take the whole account contained in 
these eight chapters of St. Luke, as descriptive of a period of our 
Lord's life and ministry which otherwise would have been an utter 
blank, as telling us what happened away both from Galilee and 
Judea during the five months that immediately preceded the cruci- 
fixion. 

Evidently the chief scene or theatre of our Lord's labors through- 
out the period was in the region east of the Jordan. Departing from 
Capernaum — turned aside by the inhabitants of the Samaritan vil- 
lage — he passed along the borders of Galilee and Samaria, crossed 
the Jordan at the ford of Bethshean, entering the southern part of 
the populous Decapolis, passing by Jabesh-Gilead, penetrating inward 
perhaps as far as Jerash, whose wonderful ruins attest its wealth and 
splendor; then turning southward towards Jerusalem, crossing the 
Jabbok, pausing at Mahanaim, where Jacob had his long night- 
struggle ; climbing or skirting those heights and forests of Gilead to 
which, when driven from Jerusalem by an ungrateful son, David 
retreated, and which now was furnishing a like refuge to the Son and 
Lord of David in a similar but still sadder extremity. Much of this 
country must have been new to Jesus. He may once or twice have 
taken the ordinary route along the eastern bank of the Jordan, but 
it is not at all likely that he had ever before gone so deep into or 
passed so leisurely through this district. Certainly he had never 
visited it in the same style or manner. He came among this new 



OUR LORD'S MINISTRY IN PER^EA. 415 

population with all the prestige of his great Galilean name. Ho 
came sending messengers before his face — in all likelihood the seventy 
expending their brief but ardent activities upon this virgin soil. He 
came as he had come at first to the Galileans, at the opening of his 
ministry, among whom many of the notices of what occurred here 
strikingly remind us, for we are distinctly told when he came into the 
" coasts beyond Jordan he went through the cities and villages," and 
"great multitudes followed him, and he healed them," and "the 
people resorted to him, and gathered thick together ; and as he was 
wont, he taught them." " And when there were gathered together 
an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trode one 
upon another, he began to say unto his disciples." Luke 13:22; 
Matt. 19:2; Mark 10:1; Luke 11:29, 42; 12:1. Here we have all 
the excitements, and the gatherings, and the manifold healings which 
attended the earlier part of the ministry in Galilee. The two com- 
munities were similarly situated, each remote from metropolitan influ- 
ence, more open to new ideas and influences than the residents in 
Jerusalem. The instrumentality brought to bear upon them in the 
presence of Jesus and his disciples, in the proclamation of the advent 
of the kingdom, in the working of all manner of cures upon the dis- 
eased among them was the same. Are we surprised at it, that so 
many of the very scenes enacted at first in Galilee should be enacted 
over again in Persea, and that, exactly similar occasions having arisen, 
the same discourses should be repeated? that once more we should 
hear the same accusation brought against Jesus when he cast out 
devils that he did so by Beelzebub, and that against this accusation 
we should hear from his lips the same defence? (Matt. 12: 24; Mark 
3 : 22 ; Luke 11 : 14 ;) that once more, as frequently before, there 
should be a seeking of some sign from heaven, and a telling again 
the evil generation that so sought after it that no sign but that of 
Jonas the prophet should be given? that once more, when asked by 
the disciples to teach them to pray, the Lord should have repeated 
the prayer he had recited in the Sermon on the Mount ? that upon 
another and equally suitable occasion, about half of that sermon 
should now be re-delivered? that we should have in this period two 
cases of healing on the Sabbath, exciting the same hostility, that hos- 
tility in turn rebuked by the employment of the same arguments and 
illustrations? These and other resemblances are not surprising, and 
yet it is the very discernment of them which has perplexed many so 
much, that (in direct opposition to the expressed purpose of the 
gospel as announced in its opening sentence) they have been tempted 
to think that, in violation of all chronological order, St. Luke h.vs 



416 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

imported into what seems to be an account of what occurred after the 
departure from Galilee many of the incidents and discourses of the 
preceding ministry in Galilee. Instead, however, of our being per- 
plexed at finding these resemblances or coincidences, knowing as wo 
lo otherwise, that it was the practice of our Saviour to reiterate (it 
is likely very often) the mightiest of his sayings, they are such as W9 
should have expected when once we come to understand precisely 
ihe peculiarities of this brief Peraean ministry. But while these 
coincidences as £o events, and repetitions as to discourses, do occur, 
there occur along with them, mixed up inseparably with them, many 
things both in the spirit and actions of Christ appropriate exclusively 
to this particular epoch of his life. No allusions to the time or man- 
ner of his own death, no reference to his departure and return, 
no pressing upon his disciples of the great duty of waiting and watch- 
ing for his second advent, no prophecies of the approaching overturn 
of the Jewish economy, came from the lips of Jesus during his sojourn 
in Galilee. It was not till the time of his transfiguration that he 
began to speak of such matters privately to his disciples, and even 
then it was with bated breath. But now all the reasons for reserve 
are nearly, if not entirely gone. Jesus has set his face to go up to 
Jerusalem to die. He waits and works only a little longer in this 
remote region beyond Jordan, till the set time has come. Nothing 
that he can say or do here can have much effect in hastening or 
retarding the day of his decease.* He may give free expression to 
those thoughts and sentiments which, now that it is drawing near, 
must be gathering often around the great event. And he may also 
safely draw aside, at least partially, the veil which hides the future, 
concealing at once the awful doom impending over Jerusalem, and 
his own speedy return to judge the nation that had rejected him. 
And this is what we now find him doing. Herod, under whose juris- 
diction he still was in Persea. had got alarmed. Fearing the people 
too much, having burden enough to bear from the beheading of the 
Baptist, he had no real intention to stretch out his hand to slay 
Jesus ; but it annoyed him to find this new excitement breaking out 
in another part of his territories, and he got some willing emissaries 
among the Pharisees to go to Jesus, and to say, as if from private 
information, "Get thee out, and depart hence, for Herod will kill 
thee." And Jesus said, "Go ye and tell that fox" — who thinks so 
cunningly by working upon my fears to get rid of me before my time — 
*■ Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to-day and to-morrow, and 
the third day I shall be perfected. Nevertheless, I must walk to-day, 
and to-morrow, and the day following: for it cannot be that a prophet 



OUR LORD'S MINISTRY IN PER.1A. 117 

perish out of Jerusalem. Jerusalem, Jerusalem ! which killest the 
prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would 
I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her 
brood under her wings, and ye would not! Behold your house is left 
unto you desolate : and verily I say unto you, Ye shall not see me, 
until the time come when ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in 
the name of the Lord." I have quoted especially these words, the 
most memorable of which were repeated afterwards, as they present 
a very accurate reflection of the peculiar mood of our Lord's mind, 
and the peculiar tone and texture of his ministry at this period. 

First, There was a shortness, a decisiveness, a strength of utter- 
ance in the message sent to Herod, which belongs to all Christ's say- 
ings of this period, whether addressed to friends or foes. His instruc- 
tions, counsels, warnings to his own disciples, he expressed in the 
briefest, most emphatic terms. Was he speaking to them of faith, 
he said, "If ye had faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye might say unto 
this sycamine-tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou 
planted in the sea, and it should obey you." Was he inculcating 
humility, he said, " Which of you having a servant ploughing or feed- 
ing cattle will say unto him by-and-by, when he is come from the 
field, Go and sit down to meat? and will not rather say unto him, 
Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till 
I have eaten and drunken, and afterward thou shalt eat and drink? 
Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were com - 
manded him ? I trow not. So likewise ye, when ye shall have done 
all these things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable 
servants, we have done that which was our duty to do." Was he warn- 
ing them against covetousness, he did it in the story of the rich man 
who, as he was making all his plans about throwing down his barns 
and building greater ones, had the words addressed to him, " Thou fool, 
this night Ihy soul shall be required of thee; then whose shall those 
things be which thou hast provided? " Was he inculcating the neces- 
sity of self denial, an entire surrender of the heart and life to him, he 
did it by turning to the multitude that followed him, and saying, "If 
any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother, and wife, 
and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he 
cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, 
and come after me, cannot be my disciple. Whosoever he be of you 
that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple."* 

« Luke 14 : 26, 27, 33 compared with Matthew 10 : 37, 38. "He that loveth father or 
mother more than me is not worthy of me. And he that loveth son or daughter more 
than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross and followeth after me 
i« not worthy of me." 

UU of OUil»t 27 



418 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

There was curtness even in our Lord's dealings with those who, 
influenced with no hostilo feeling, came to him with needless and 
impertinent inquiries. " Master," said one of the company, " speak 
to my brother that he may divide the inheritance with me. And he 
said, Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you?" "There 
were present some that told him of the Galileans whose blood Pilate 
had mingled with their sacrifices." It was not enough to tell them 
that they were wrong if they imagined that these men were sinners 
above all the Galileans because they suffered such things. They 
must have it also there told to them, " I say unto you, Except ye 
repent, ye shall all likewise perish." Marked especially by the same 
feature was our Lord's treatment of his enemies, the Pharisees. 
Their hostility to him had now reached its height. "They began to 
urge him vehemently, and to provoke him to speak of many things; 
laying wait for him and seeking to catch something out of his mouth, 
that they might accuse him," and " as they heard all these things 
they derided him." Luke 11:53, 54; 16:14. He gave them indeed 
good reason to be provoked. One of them invited him to dinner, and 
he went in and sat down to meat. The custom, whether expressed 
or not, that he had not first washed before dinner, gave Jesus the fit 
opportunity, and in terms very different from any he had employed 
in Galilee, he denounced the whole body to which his host belonged, 
"Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the 
platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. Ye 
fools ! Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye are 
as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not 
aware of them." The first notes thus sounded of that terrible denun- 
ciation that rung through the courts of the temple as our Lord turned 
to take his last farewell of them and of his enemies. 

Corresponding with this manner of speaking was our Lord's man- 
ner of action at this time. The three conspicuous miracles of this 
period were the two Sabbath cures and the healing of the ten lepers. 
Like all the others of the same class, the two former were spontane- 
ous on Christ's part, wrought by him of his own free movement, and 
not upon any application or appeal. In a synagogue one Sabbath 
day he saw a woman that for eighteen years had been bowed togeth- 
er, and could in no way lift herself up. And when he saw her, " he 
said unto the woman, Thou art loosed from thine infirmity, and he 
laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight and 
glorified God." Invited on another Sabbath-day to sup with one of 
the chief Pharisees, as he entered he saw before him a man which 
had the dropsy, brought there perhaps on purpose to see what he 




W:*feUttluA 



''Behold, I Stand at the Door and Knock !'' 



OUR LORD'S MINISTRY IN PER^A. 419 

would do. Turning to the assembled guests, Jesus put a single ques- 
tion to them, more direct than any he had put in Galilee. " Is it 
lawful to heal on the Sabbath-day?" They said nothing, and he 
" took the man and healed him, and let him go." Entering into a 
certain village, he saw before him ten lepers, who stood afar off, and 
lifted up their voices and said, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us." 
He said to them as soon as he saw them, " Go, show yourselves unto 
the priests." ' You have what you ask ; you are cured already. Go, 
do what the cured are required by your law to do.' A few words are 
spoken at a distance, and all the men are at once healed. Is there 
not a quick promptitude displayed in all these cases, as if the actor 
had no words or time to spare ? 

But, secondly, our Lord's thoughts were fixed much at this time 
upon the future — his own future and that of those around him. His 
chief work of teaching and healing was over. True, he was teaching 
and healing still, but it was by the way. All was done as by one 
that was on a journey — who had a great goal before him, upon which 
his eye was intently fixed. With singular minuteness of perspective, 
the dark close of his own earthly existence now rose up before him. 
"Behold," he said at its close, "we go up to Jerusalem, and all 
things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man 
shall be accomplished. For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, 
and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on : and 
they shall scourge him, and put him to death." Luke 18 : 31-33. "I 
have a baptism to be baptized with," he said at the beginning of the 
period, "and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" Luke 
12 : 50. " And the third day he shall rise again." But beyond the 
days, whether of his own death or of his resurrection, that other day 
of his second coming now for the first time is spoken of. He is press- 
ing upon his disciples the great duty of taking no undue thought for 
the future — using the same terms and employing the same images as 
he had in the Sermon on the Mount; but he goes now a step farther 
than he had done then, closing all by saying, "Let your loins be 
girded about, and your lights burning; and ye yourselves like unto 
men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; 
that, when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immedi- 
ately. Blessed are those servants, whom the lord, when he cometh, 
shall find watching. . . . Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of 
man cometh at an hour when ye think not." Luke 12: 35, 36, 37, -40. 
Still in darkness as to the true nature of the kingdom of God, irri- 
tated, it may have been, that after the announcement that it had 
come so little should bu said about it, so Lew tokens of its presence 



420 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

should appear, the Pharisees demanded of him when the kingdom of 
God should come. He told them that they were looking for it in an 
altogether wrong direction. " The kingdom of God," he said, " comeih 
not with observation ; neither shall they say, Lo here ! or Lo there I 
for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you" — for them, for us, foi 
all men, one of the most important lessons that ever could be taught — 
that God's true spiritual kingdom is in nothing outward, but lies in 
the inward state and condition of the soul. Nevertheless, there was 
to be much outward and visible enough, much connected with that 
kingdom and his own lordship over it, of which these Pharisees were 
little dreaming, and which was destined to break upon them and upon 
their children with all the terror of a terrible surprise. This was in 
his thoughts when, after having corrected the error of the Pharisees 
as to the nature of the kingdom, he turned to his disciples and said 
to them, " The days will come when ye shall desire to see one of the 
days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it. And they shall say 
to you, See here ! or, See there ! go not after them, nor follow 
them; for as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the one part under 
heaven, shineth unto the other part under heaven, so shall also the 
Son of man be in his day. But first must he suffer many things, and 
Ire rejected of this generation. And as it was in the days of Noah, so 
shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. Likewise also as ii 
was in the days of Lot. . . . thus shall it be in the day when the Son 
of man is revealed" — our Lord enlarging upon this topic till in what 
he said upon this occasion you have the first rough sketch of that 
grand and awful picture presented in his last discourse to the apostles 
upon the ridge of Mount Olivet, preserved in Matt. 24. 

That section of our Lord's life and labors, of which a short sketch 
has been presented, has been greatly overlooked — thrown, in fact, 
into the distance and obscurity which hangs over the region in which 
it was enacted. A careful study will guide to the conviction that in 
it Christ occupied a position intermediate between the one assumed 
in Galilee and the one taken up by him at Jerusalem in the days that 
immediately preceded his crucifixion. 



THE PARABLES OF THE PEE^IAN MINISTRY. 421 

The Parables of the Per^ean Ministry. 

Dcjking that ministry in Peraea whose course and character we 
have traced, our Lord delivered not fewer than ten parables-— as 
many within these five months as in the two preceding years — a third 
of all that have been recorded as coming from his lips. The simple 
recital of them will satisfy you how fertile in this respect this period 
was, while a few rapid glances at the occasions which suggested 
some of them, and at their general drift and meaning, may help to 
confirm the representation already given of the peculiar features by 
which that stage in our Lord's life stands marked. We have before 
us here the parables of the Good Samaritan, the Kich Fool, the Bar- 
ren Fig-tree, the Great Supper, the Lost Sheep, the Lost Piece of 
Money, the Prodigal Son, the Provident Steward, Dives and Lazarus, 
the Unjust Judge, the, Pharisee and the Publican. 

The first of these was given as an answer to the question, " Who 
is my neighbor ?" arid, as inculcating the lesson of a broad and unsec- 
tarian charity, might, with almost equal propriety, have been spoken 
at any time in the course of our Lord's ministry. It gives, however, an 
additional point and force to the leading incident of the story, when we 
think of it as delivered a few days after our Lord himself had received 
such treatment at the hands of the Samaritans as might have re- 
strained him — had he not been himself the great example of the 
charity he inculcated — from making a Samaritan the hero of the tale. 

The second sprung from an application made to Jesus, the man- 
ner of whose treatment merits our particular regard. One of two 
brothers, both of whom appear to have been present on the occa- 
sion, said to him, " Master, speak to my brother that he divide the 
inheritance with me." A request not likely to have been made till 
Christ's fairness and fearlessness, in recoil from all falsehood and 
injustice, had been openly manifested and generally recognized- -a 
request, however, grounded upon a total misconception of the nature 
and objects of his ministry. The dispute that had taken place 
between the two brothers was one for the law of the country to settle. 
For Christ to have interfered in such a case — to have pronounced 
any judgment on either side, would have been tantamount to an 
assumption on his part of the office of the civil magistrate. This 
Jesus promptly and peremptorily refused. " Man," said he, " who 
made Die a judge over you?" More than once was Christ tempted 



422 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

to enter upon the proper and peculiar province of the judge. More 
than once were certain difficult legal and political cases and ques- 
tions submitted to him for decision; but he always, in the most mark 
ed and decisive manner, refused to entertain them. With the exist 
ing government and institutions of the country, with the ordinary 
administration of its laws, he never did and never would interfere. 
You can lay your hand upon no one law, upon no one practice, 
having reference purely to man's temporal estate, which had the 
sanction of the public authorities, that Jesus condemned or refused 
to comply with. No doubt there was great tyranny being practised, 
there were unjust laws, iniquitous institutions in operation, but he did 
not take it upon him to expose, much less to resist them. For the 
guidance of men in all the different relations in which they can be 
placed to one another he announced and expounded the great and 
broad, eternal and immutable, principles of justice and of mercy. 
But with the application of these principles to particular cases he 
did not intermeddle. He carefully and deliberately avoided such 
intermeddling. It is possible indeed that the demand made upon 
him in the instance now before us, may not have been for any author- 
itative decision upon a matter that fell properly to be determined by 
the legal tribunals. Had the claim been one that could be made 
good at law, it is not so likely that Jesus would have been appealed 
to in the matter. The object of the petitioner may simply have been 
to get Christ to act as an umpire or arbitrator in a dispute which the 
letter of the law might have regulated in one way, and the principle 
of equity in another. But neither in that character would Jesus 
interfere. "Man, who made me a divider over you ? " He would not 
mix himself up with this or any other family dispute about property. 
Willing as he was to earn for himself the blessedness of the peace- 
maker, he was not prepared to try and earn it in this way. It was 
no part of his office, as head of that great spiritual kingdom which 
he came to establish upon the earth, to act as arbitrator between such 
conflicting claims as these two brothers might present. To set up 
the kingdom of righteousness and peace and love in both their 
hearts — that was his office. Let that be done ; then, without either 
lawsuit or arbitration, the brothers could settle the matter between 
themselves. But so long as that was not done — so long as either one 
or both of these brothers was acting in the pure spirit of selfish- 
ness — there was no proper room or opportunity for Jesus to interfere ; 
nor would interposition, even if he had ventured on it, have realized 
any of those ends which his great mission to our earth was intended 
to accomplish. 



THE PARABLES OF THE PERJ3AN MINISTRY. 423 

The example of non-intervention thus given by Christ, rightlj 
interpreted, has a wide range. It applies to disputes between kings 
and subjects, masters and servants, employers and employed. These 
in the form that they ordinarily assume, it is not the office of Jesus 
to determine. That he who rules over men should be just, ruling in 
the fear of the Lord; that we should obey them that rule over us, 
living a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty — this 
he proclaims, but he does not determine what just ruling is, nor 
what the limits of obedience are, nor how, in any case of conflict, 
the right adjustment is to be made between the prerogatives of th@ 
crown and the liberties of the subject; and if ever discord should 
arise between oppressive rulers and exacting subjects who, with 
equal pride, equal selfishness, equal ambition, try the one to keep 
and the other to grasp as much power as possible, in such a struggle 
Christianity, if true to her own spirit and to her Founder's example, 
stands aloof, refusing to take either side. 

"Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal." 
Such is the rule that Christianity lays down; but what exactly, in 
any particular case, would be the just and equal thing to do — what 
would be the proper wages for the master to offer and the servant 
to receive — she leaves that to be adjusted between masters and 
servants, according to the varying circumstances by which the wages 
of all kinds of labor must be regulated. It has been made a ques- 
tion whether, in our great manufacturing cities, capital gives to labor 
its fair share of the profits. One can conceive that question raised 
by the employed as against their employers, in the spirit of a purely 
selfish and aggressive discontent ; and that, so raised, it might 
provoke and lead on to open collision between the two. Here, again, 
in a struggle, originating thus, and carried on in such a spirit, Chris- 
tianity refuses to take a part. She would that employers should b@ 
more liberal, more humane, more tenderly considerate, not only of 
the wants, but of the feelings of those by the labor of whose hands? 
it is that their wealth is created. She would that the employed 
should be less selfish, less envious, less irritable — more contented. 
It is not by a clashing of opposing interests, but by a rivalry of jnst 
and generous sentiments on either side, that she would keep the 
balance even — the only way of doing so productive of lasting good. 

After correcting the error into which the applicant to him had 
fallen — as though the settlement of legal questions, or family dis- 
putes about the division of estates, lay within his province — Jesua 
took advantage of the opportunity to expose and rebuke the principle 
which probably actuated both brothers, the one to withhold and the 



4:24 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

other to demand. Turning to the general audience by ^nich he wa* 
surrounded, he said, " Take heed and beware of covetousness." The 
word here rendered " covetousness" is a peculiar and very expressive 
one; it means the spirit of greed — that ever-restless, ever-craving, 
ever-unsatisfied spirit, which, whatever a man has, is ever wanting 
more, and the more he gets still thirsts for more. A passion which 
has a strange history; often of honest enough birth — the child of 
forethought, but changing its character rapidly with its growth — get- 
ting prematurely blind — losing sight of the end in the means — till 
wealth is loved and sought and grasped and hoarded, not for the 
advantages it confers, the enjoyment it purchases, but simply for 
itself— to gratify that lust of possession which has seized upon the 
soul, and makes it all its own. It was to warn against the entrance 
and spread and power of this passion that Jesus spake a parable 
unto them, saying, " The ground of a certain rich man brought forth 
plentifully : and he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, 
because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? And he said, 
This will I dc I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and 
there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to 
my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years ; take 
thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou 
fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee ; then whose shall 
those things be which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up 
treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God." 

Beyond the circumstance already noted, that the request which 
suggested it was one more appropriate to a late than to an early period 
of our Lord's ministry, we have nothing in the parable, any more 
than in that of the Good Samaritan, which specially connects it with 
the ministry in Porsea. It is different with the two that come next in 
order — that of the Barren Fig-tree and of the Great Supper. 

Some who were present once told Jesus of those Galileans whose 
blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He told them, in 
reply, of the eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, repeating, 
as he did so, the warning, "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise 
perish." We miss the full force of the prophetic knell thus sounded 
in their ears, in consequence of the word "likewise" being often used 
by us as equivalent to "also," or " as well." The intimation, as given 
by Jesus, was that they would perish in the same manner. The work 
done by the Koman sword, the deaths caused by a single falling 
tower, were brought before the mind of Jesus; and instantly he 
thinks of the wider sweep of that sword, and the falling of all the 
towers and battlements of Jerusalem ; and when that terrible calamity 



THE PARABLES OF THE PER^AN MINISTRY. 425 

(of which we have here the first obscure hint or prophecy that came 
from the lips of Jesus) descended upon the Jewish people, then to 
the very letter were his words fulfilled, as thousands fell beneath the 
stroke of the Roman sabres — slain, as the Galileans were, in the 
midst of their passover sacrifices — and multitudes were crushed to 
death beneath the falling ruins of their beloved Jerusalem. None 
but Christ himself, none of those who listened for the first time to 
these warning words, could tell to what they pointed. Forty years 
were to intervene before the impending doom came to be executed 
upon the devoted city. No sign or token of its approach was visible. 
Those around him, some of whom were to witness and to share in the 
calamity, were living in security, not knowing how rapidly the period 
of forbearance was running out, not knowing that the time then 
present was but for them a season of respite. It was to indicate how 
false that feeling of security was, to give them the true key to the 
Lord's present dealings with them as a people, that Jesus told them 
of a fig-tree planted in a vineyard, to which for three successive 
years the owner of the vineyard had come seeking fruit and finding 
none ; turning to the dresser of the vineyard, and saying, " Gut it 
down, why cumbereth it the ground?" And the dresser of the vine- 
yard said to him, " Lord, let it alone this year also, till I dig about it, 
and dung it: and if it bear fruit, well; and if not, then after that 
thou shalt cut it down." And there, at the point of the respite 
sought and granted, the action of the parable ceases Did the year 
of grace go by in vain? Was all the fresh labor of £io dresser fruit- 
less? Was the tree at last cut down? All aboui this the parable 
leaves' untold. It had been the image of the end, as it crossed the 
Saviour's thoughts, that had suggested the parable; but the time 
had not yet come for his going farther in the history of the tree than 
the telling that its last year of trial had arrived, and that if it 
remained fruitless it was to be cut down. The story of the tree was, 
in fact, a prophetic allegory, meant to represent the state and pros- 
pects of the Jewish people, for whom so much had been done in the 
years that were past, and so much more in the year then present : 
the story stopping abruptly at the very stage which was then being 
described — not without an ominous foreshadowing of the dark doom 
in reserve for impenitent Israel — the Israel that refused to benefit 
by all the care and the toil that Jesus had lavished on it. It is, of 
tourse, not only easy, but altogether legitimate and beneficial, for the 
broader purposes of Christian teaching, to detach this parable from 
its primary connections and its immediate objects; but, as it ever 
should be the first aim in reading any of our Lord's sayings to under- 



rM THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

stand their significance as at first uttered, in this instance we are left 
in no doubt or uncertainty that it was the generation of the Jews 
then living, then upon probation, then in the last stage of their trial— 
that the fig-tree of the parable, in the first instance, was intended to 
represent. Kegarded so, how singularly appropriate to the time of 
its delivery, in its form and structure, does the parable appear! It 
is the first of a series of allegorical prophecies, in which the whole 
after-history of the people and age, to which Jesus may be said to 
have himself belonged, stands portrayed. Never before had any hint 
of the outward or historical issues of his advent, so far as the gene- 
ration which rejected him was concerned, dropped from the lips of 
Jesus. Such allusion, we may say with reverence, would have been 
mistimed had it been made earlier. It was suitable that the great 
trial upon which his mission to them put that generation should 1 >e 
somewhat advanced, be drawing near its close, before the judicial 
visitations, consequent upon its treatment of the Messiah, should 1 >c 
declared. And here, in the narrative of St. Luke, the prophetic 
announcement meets us, as made for the first time after our Lords 
labors in Galilee are over, and he is waiting to go up to Jerusalem to 
be crucified; and, as the first hint of the kind given, it is, as was fit- 
ting, brief and limited in its range, throwing a clear beam of light 
upon the time then present, leaving the future enveloped with a 
threatening gloom. 

The same things are true of the parable that comes next in order 
in the pages of St. Luke. It carries the story of the future a little 
farther on; but it, too, stops abruptly. A great supper is made, to 
which many had been invited. The servant is sent out to say to 
them that were bidden, "Come, for all things are now ready." With 
one consent, but giving different reasons, they all excuse themselves. 
The servants are sent out first to the streets and lanes of the city, 
then to the highways and hedges, to bring others in, that the table 
may be filled. The narrative closes with the emphatic utterance of 
the giver of the feast — " For I say unto you, that none of these men 
that were bidden shall taste of my supper." Here, in the first invited 
guests, we at once recognize the Jews, or rather that section of them 
which stood represented by their lawyers and Pharisees, among 
whom Jesus was at the time sitting. They had had the invitation long 
in their hands, and professed to have accepted it; but when the time 
came, and the call came from the lips of Jesus to enter the kingdom, 
to partake of the prepared supper, they all, with one consent, had 
made excuse. And they were to reap this as the fruit of their doing 
so — that the poor, the lame, the halt, the blind, the wanderers of the 



THE PAEABLES OF THE PERSIAN MINISTRY. 427 

highways and hedges, were to be brought in, and they were to be 
excluded. Of this result the parable gives a clear enough fore- 
shadowing; but it does not actually reveal the issue. It stops with 
the second mission of the servants and the declaration of a fixed 
purpose on the part of the giver of the entertainment: but it does 
not describe the supper itself, nor tell how the last errand of the 
servant prospered, nor how the fixed resolution of the master of the 
house to exclude was carried out. Over these it leaves the same 
obscurity hanging, that in the preceding parable was left hanging 
over the cutting down of the tree. There is a step taken in advance. 
Beyond the rejection of the Jews, we have the gathering in of the 
Gentiles in their stead alluded to, but obviously the main purpose of 
the parable as indicated by the point at which it stops and the last 
speech of the master of the house, which is left sounding in our ears, 
is to proclaim that those who had rejected the first invitation that 
Christ had brought should, in their turn, be themselves rejected of 
him. Here, then, we have another parable fitting in with the former, 
and in common with it perfectly harmonizing with that particulai 
epoch at which St. Luke represents it as having been delivered. 

The parable of the Great Supper was spoken at table, in the house 
of a chief Pharisee, in the midst of a company of Pharisees and law- 
yers, Soon afterwards, Jesus appears to us in the centre of a very 
different circle. "Then drew near unto him all the publicans and 
sinners to hear him." Jesus welcomed them with joy, devoted him- 
self with the readiest zeal to their instruction. The Pharisees who 
were present were offended at what they had noted or had been told 
about the familiarity of his intercourse with these publicans and sin- 
ners ; his acceptance of their invitations ; his permitting them to use 
freedom even with his person. "And they murmured, saying, This 
man receiveth sinners and eateth with them." The Pharisees in 
Galilee had done the same thing ; and that St. Luke, in the fifteenth 
chapter, is not referring to the same incident that St. Matthew, in his 
ninth chapter, has recorded, but is relating what happened over 
again in Peraea, just as it had occurred before in Galilee, is evident 
from this, that he himself, in his fifth chapter, records the previous 
Galilean incident. In answer to the first murmurings that broke out 
against him for companying with publicans and sinners, Jesus had 
contented himself with saying, "They that be whole need not a 
physician, but they which are sick. I came not to call the righteous, 
but sinners to repentance." Now, however, he makes a longer 
apology and defence. He will let these muvmurers know what it is 
in the condition of these publicans and sinners which has drawn him 



i28 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

to tliein and fixed on them his regard — why and for what it is that 
he has attached himself so closely to them — even to bring them to 
repentance, win them back to God. He will draw aside for a moment 
the veil that hides the invisible world, and let it be seen what is 
thought elsewhere, among the angels of God, of that ready reception 
}f sinners on his part which has evoked such aversion. Christ does 
this in three parables — that of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Piece of 
Money, and the Lost Son. Taken together, these three parables 
compose our Lord's reply to the censure passed upon his conduct by 
the Pharisees, and they do so by presenting at once the whole history 
of that recovery from their lost condition, which it was Christ's great 
object to see realized in those with whom he associated, and the 
effect of such recovery as contemplated by those who, not themselves 
feeling their need of it, looked askance upon the whole procedure by 
which it was realized ; for just as clearly as the history of the loss 
and the recovery of the one sheep, and the one piece of money, and 
the one son, were intended to represent that conversion to God which 
it was the main aim of Christ's converse with the publicans and sin- 
ners to effect, just as clearly do the ninety-nine sheep, and the nine 
pieces of money, and the elder brother, stand as representatives of 
these murmuring scribes and Pharisees — those just persons, just in 
their own eyes, who needed no repentance — thought they did not 
need it, and who, not understanding the nature or the necessity of the 
work of conversion in others, condemned the Saviour when engaged 
in this work. There is a difference, indeed, in the three parables, so 
far as they bear upon their character and conduct. The ninety and 
nine sheep and the nine pieces of money, being either inanimate or 
u intelligent, afforded no fit opportunity of a symbolic exhibition of 
the temper and disposition of the Pharisees. This opportunity was 
afforded in the third parable, and is there largely taken advantage of. 
The elder brother — the type or emblem of those against whom Jesus 
is defending himself — is there brought prominently out upon the 
stage : a full revelation of his distrustful, spiteful, envious spirit is 
made. If thirteen verses are given to the story of the younger 
brother, the prodigal son, no fewer than eight are given to that of the 
elder brother. The thirteen verses too, it is to be remembered, cover 
the incidents of years ; the eight, those of a single evening. Naturally 
and properly, the deeper, livelier, more universal interest that attach- 
es to the story of the younger overshadows that of the elder brother — 
so deeply, indeed, that we think and speak of the parable as that of 
the Prodigal Son ; but as originally spoken, and for the purposes 
originally contemplated, the part played by the elder brother had 



THE PARABLES OF THE PERyEAN MINISTRY. 429 

much more importance assigned to it than we now are disposed to 
give it. He is out in the field when his younger brother is so gladly 
welcomed and has the fatted calf killed to celebrate his recovery. 
Returning in the evening, he hears the sounds of the music and the 
dancing within the happy dwelling. He calls one of the servants, 
ami hears from him what has happened. And now all the fountains 
of selfishness and pride, and envy and malignity, pour out their bitter 
waters. He sulkily refuses to go in. His father comes out and 
remonstrates with him. But he will listen to no entreaty. He for- 
gets for the moment all his family relationships. He will not call his 
parent father ; he will not speak to him as to one to whom he had 
been indebted — rather he will charge him with injustice and unkind- 
ness; he will not call the once lost, but now found one his brother — 
"this thy son" is the way that he speaks of him. Notwithstanding 
all his unfilial, unbrotherly, contemptuous arrogance, how kindly, 
how patiently is he dealt with ; how mildly is the father's vindication 
made; how gently is the rebuke administered! Did it soften him, 
subdue him ? did he, too, come to see how unworthy he was to be 
the son of such a father ? melted into penitence, did he too, at last 
throw himself into his father's arms, and in him was another lost one 
found ? Just as in the parable of the Barren Fig-tree and the Great 
Supper, the curtain drops as the scene should come upon the stage 
in which the final fortunes of those of whom we take the elder broth- 
er as the type should have been disclosed. And in so closing, this 
parable goes far to proclaim its birth-time as belonging to the period 
when Jesus was just beginning to lift the veil which hung over the 
shrouded future of impenitent and unbelieving Israel. 

The next parable, that of the Unjust Steward, was addressed par- 
ticularly, and we may say, exclusively, to the disciples. It contains 
no note of time by which the date of its delivery might be determined. 
"We are struck, however, with finding that throughout the period now 
before us, it was as servants waiting and watching for the return of 
their master, as stewards to whom their absent lord has committed 
the care of his household during a temporary departure, that the 
apostles and disciples were generally addressed. And even as the 
woes impending over doomed Israel were now filling the Saviour's 
eye, the first pre-intimation of them breaking forth from his lips, even 
so does the condition of the mother church at Jerusalem, in the 
dreary years of persecution that preceded the destruction of Jerusa- 
lem, seem to have lain at this time heavy upon his heart. It was 
with reference to the sorrows and trials that his servants should in 
that interval endure, and to the wrongs inflicted on them, that the 



430 THE LIFE OF CHEIST 

parable of the Unjust Judge was spoken. Its capital lesson was 
importunity in prayer, but the prayer that was to go up sc often, and 
was at last to be heard, was prayer from the persecuted while suffer- 
ing beneath the lash. This parable, therefore, like so many of its 
immediate predecessors, exactly fits the season at which St. Luke 
reports it as having been spoken. 

Were it not for the interest which attaches to the question wheth- 
er or not the chapters of St. Luke's gospel, from the ninth to the 
eighteenth, present us with a true, and faithful, and orderly narrative 
of a period in our Lord's life of which no other of the evangelists tell 
us anything, I should not have dwelt so long upon this topic. I 
shall have gained the end I had in view, however, if I have brought 
distinctly out to view the &Ye months that elapsed after Christ's fare- 
well to Galilee, as spent, for the most part, in the regions beyond the 
Jordan, as occupied with a ministry bearing evident tokens of a 
transition period, in which with his face set steadfastly towards the 
great decease he was to accomplish at Jerusalem, our Lord's thoughts 
were much occupied with the future — the future which concerned 
himself, his followers, the nation. The events, the miracles, the 
parables of the period, are all in harmony; and as a whole we may 
safely say, that they carry in their bosom internal evidence of their 
having been rightly located by St. Luke, unsuitable as they would 
have been either for any preceding or any posterior section of our 
Lord's life. It is but attributing to Christ our humanity in true and 
perfect form to imagine that the ending of his labors in Galilee and 
Judea, and the near prospect of his death, threw him into an atti- 
tude of thought and feeling congenial to the circumstances in which 
he was placed. It was natural that the unseen and the future should 
at this time absorb the seen and the present. It may be a fancy, but 
I have thought, while reading again and again the ten parables 
which belong to this period, that far more frequently and more 
vividly than ever before in his ministry is the invisible world laid 
bare. The spirit summoned that night into the immediate presence 
of its judge — the angels rejoicing over each repentant returning sin- 
ner — the bosom of Abraham upon which Lazarus is represented as 
reposing — the hell into which the soul of the rich man in dying 
sinks — where in any of the preceding addresses or parables of our 
Lord have we the same unfolding of the world that lies beyond the 
grave ? Is it not as one who is himself holding closer fellowship with 
shat world into which he is so soon himself to enter that Jesus 
speaks? One thing is not a fancy, that more frequently and more 
urgently than ever before does Jesus press upon his disciples the 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 431 

duty of holding such fellowship. By the story of the friend at mid- 
night awakened by the continued and repeated solicitations of his 
neighbor, by that of the unjust judge moved to redress her wrongs 
by the simple importunity of the widow, by that of the prayer of the 
poor publican heard at once and answered, by the appeal to theii 
own generosity as fathers in the treatment of their children, did Jesus 
at this time seek to draw his disciples to the throne of grace, and 
keep them there, praying on in the assurance that earnest, renewed, 
repeated petitions offered in sincerity and faith shall never go up to 
God in vain. And who is he that encourages us thus to pray — that 
gives us the assurance that our prayers will be answered? Is he not 
our own great and gracious Advocate, who takes our imperfect peti- 
tions as they spring from our defiled lips, our divided and sinful 
hearts, and turns them into his own all-powerful, all-prevailing plead- 
ings as he presents them to the Father ? 



XI. 

The Good Samaritan.* 

"Behold, a certain lawyer stood up" — in all likelihood within 
some synagogue upon a Sabbath-day. In rising to put a question to 
Jesus, he was guilty of no impertinent intrusion. Jesus had assumed 
the office of a public teacher, and it was by questions put and an- 
swered that this office was ordinarily discharged. This lawyer " stood 
up and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eter- 
nal life?" His object might have been to perplex and entangle — to 
involve Christ in a difficulty from which he perceived or hoped that 
he would be unable to extricate himself. Questions of this kind were 
often put to Jesus, their very character and construction betraying 
their intent. But the question of the lawyer is not one of this nature. 
Something more than a mere idle curiosity, or a desire to test the 
extent of Christ's capacity or knowledge, appears to have prompted 
it. It is not presented in the bare abstract form. It is not, " Master, 
what should be done that eternal life be inherited?" but, "Master, 
what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" It looks as if it came from 
one feeling a true, deep, and personal interest in the inquiry. 

The manner in which our Lord entertained it confirms this im- 
pression. Questions of many kinds from many quarters were address- 

o Luke 10:25-29. 



4:32 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

ed to Jesus. With one or two memorable exceptions, the}' were an 
answered, but in different ways; whenever any insidious and sinister 
purpose lay concealed beneath apparent homage, the answer was 
always such as to show that the latent guile lay open as day to his 
eye. But there is nothing of that description here. In the first 
instance, indeed, he will make the questioner go as far as he can in 
answering his own question. He will tempt — that is, try or prove him 
in turn. Knowing that he is a scribe well instructed in the law, he 
will throw him back upon his own knowledge. Before saying any- 
thing about eternal life, or the manner of its inheritance, Jesus saj^s, 
"What is written in the law? how readest thou?" It is altogether 
remarkable that in answer to a question so very general as this — one 
which admitted of such various replies — this man should at once have 
laid his hand upon two texts, standing far apart from each other — 
the first occurring early in Deuteronomy, the second far on in Levit- 
icus — texts having no connection with each other in the outer form 
or letter of the law, to which no peculiar or pre-eminent position is 
there assigned, which are nowhere brought into juxtaposition, nor are 
quoted as if, when brought together, they formed a summary or com- 
pound of the whole ; the two very texts, in fact, which, on an after 
occasion, in answer to another scribe, our Lord himself cited as the 
two upon which all the law and the prophets hung. The man who, 
overlooking the whole mass of ceremonial or ritualistic ordinances as 
being of altogether inferior consideration, not once to be taken into 
account when the question was one as to a man's inheriting eternal 
life, who so readily and so confidently selected these two command- 
ments as containing the sum and substance of the whole, gave good 
proof how true his reading of the law was. "And Jesus said to him, 
Thou hast answered right : this do, and thou shalt live." ' Take bui 
thine own right reading of the law, fulfil aright those two great pre- 
cepts, Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, Love thy neigh- 
bor as thyself, and thou shalt live ; live in loving and in serving, or if 
thou readiest not in this way the life thou aimest at, thou wilt at 
least, by the very failure, be taught to look away from the precepts 
to the promises, and so be led to the true source and fountain 
of eternal life in the free grace of the Father through me the Son.' 

Trying to escape from the awkward position of one out of whose 
own lips so simple and satisfactory a reply to his own question had 
been extracted — desiring to justify himself for still appearing as a 
questioner, by showing that there was yet something about which 
there remained a doubt — he said to Jesus, "And who is my neigh- 
bor?" We may fairly assume that one so well read as this man was 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 433 

as to the true meaning of the law, was equally well read as to the 
popular belief and practice regarding it. He knew what interpreta- 
tion was popularly put on the expression, " thy neighbor/' which 
stood embodied in the practice of his countrymen. He knew with' 
what supercilious contempt they looked down upon the whole Gentile 
world around them — calling them the " uncircumcised," the " dogs," 
the " polluted," the " unclean," — with what a double contempt they 
regarded the Samaritans living by their side. He knew that it was 
no part of the popular belief to regard a Samaritan as a neighbor. 
So far from this, the Jew would have no dealings with him, cursed 
him publicly in his synagogue, would not receive his testimony in a 
court of justice, prayed that he might have no portion in the resur- 
rection. He knew all this — had himself been brought up to the 
belief and practice. But he was not satisfied with it. Along with 
that fine instinct of the understanding which had enabled him to 
extract the pure and simple essence out of the great body of the 
Jewish code, there was that finer instinct of the heart which taught 
him that it was within too narrow bounds that the love to our 
neighbor had been limited. He saw and felt that these bounds 
should be widened; but how far? upon what principle, and to 
what extent? Anxious to know this, he says, " And who is my 
neighbor? " 

Christ answers by what we take to be the recital of an incident 
that had actually occurred, A fictitious story — a parable invented 
for the occasion — would not so fully have answered the purpose he 
had in view. A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. 
We are not told who or what he was: but the conditions and object 
of the narrative require that he was a Jew. The road from Jerusa- 
lem to Jericho — though short, and at certain seasons of the year 
much frequented — was yet lonely and perilous to the last degree, 
especially to a single and undefended traveller. It passes through 
the heart of the eastern division of the wilderness of Judea, and runs 
for a considerable space along the abrupt and winding sides of a deep 
and rocky ravine, offering the greatest facilities for concealment and 
attack. From the number of robberies and murders committed in it, 
Jews of old called it " the Bloody Road," and it retains its character 
still. v We travelled it, guarded by a dozen Arabs, who told, by the 
way, of an English party that the year before had been attacked and 
plundered and stripped, and we were kept in constant alarm by the 
scouts sent out beforehand announcing the distant sight of danger- 
ous-looking Bedouins, All the way from Bethany to the plain of 
the Jordan is utter solitude — one single ruin, perhaps that of the 
very inn to which the wounded Jew was carried, being the only sign 

Life of Christ 28 



134 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

@f human habitation that meets the eye. Somewhere along this road, 
the solitary traveller of whom Jesus speaks is attacked. Perhaps he 
earries his all along with him, and, unwilling to part with it, stand* 
upon his defence, wishing to sell life and property as dearly as hs* 
can. Perhaps he carries but little — nothing that the thievish ban! 
into whose hands he falls much value. Whether it is that a .struggle 
has taken place, or that exasperation at disappointment whets their 
wrath, the robbers of the wilderness strip their victim of his raiment, 
wound him, and leave him there half dead. As he lies in that condi- 
tion on the roadside, first a priest, and then a Levite approaches. A 
single glance is sufficient for the priest ; the Levite stops, and takes 
a longer, steadier look. The effect in either case is the same — abhor- 
rence and aversion. As men actuated by some other sentiment 
beyond that of mere insensibility, they shrink back, putting as great 
a distance as they can between them and the poor naked wounded 
man; as if there were pollution in proximity — as if the very aii 
around the man were infected — as if to go near him, much more to 
touch, to lift, to handle him, were to be defiled. To what are we to 
attribute this? To sheer indifference — to stony-hearted inhumanity? 
That might explain their passing without a feeling of sympathy 
excited or a hand of help held out, but it will not explain the quick 
and sensitive recoil — the passing by on the other side. Is it, then, 
the bare horror of the sight that drives them back? If there be 
something to excite horror, surely there is more to move pity. That 
naked, quivering body, those gaping, bleeding wounds, the pa-le and 
speechless lips, the eyes so dull and heavy with pain, yet sending*oufc 
such imploring looks — where is the human heart, left free to its own 
spontaneous actings, they could fail to touch? But these men's 
hearts — the hearts of the priest and Levite — are not left thus free . 
not that their hearts are destitute of the common sympathies of our 
nature — not that their breasts are steeled against every form and 
kind of human woe — not that, in other circumstances, they would see 
a wounded, half dead neighbor lying, and leave him unpitied and 
unhelped. No! but because their hearts — as tender, it may have 
been, by nature as those of others — have been trained in the school 
of national and religious bigotry, and have been taught there, not the 
lesson of sheer and downright inhumanity, but of that narrow exclu- 
siveness which would limit all their sympathies and all their aid to 
those of their own country and their own faith. The priest and the 
Levite have been up at Jerusalem, discharging in their turn their 
offices in the temple. They have got quickened afresh there all the 
prejudices of their calling; they are returning to Jericho, with all 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN 435 

their prejudices strong within their breasts ; they see the sfi d sight 
by the way; they pause a moment to contemplate it. Had it been 
a brother priest, a brother Levite, a brother Jew that lay in that 
piteous plight, none readier to help than they ; but he is naked, there 
is nothing on him or about him to tell who or what he is — ho is 
speechless, and can say nothing for himself. He may be a hated 
Edomite, he may be a vile Samaritan, for aught that they can tell. 
The possibility of this is enough. Touch, handle, help such a man ! 
they might be doing thereby a far greater outrage to their Jewish 
prejudices than they did to the mere sentiment of indiscriminate pity 
by passing him by, and so they leave him as they find him, in hasto 
to get past the dangerous neighborhood, to congratulate themselves 
on the w r onderful escape they had made — for the wounds of the poor 
wretch were fresh, and bleeding freely — it could have been but shortly 
before they came up that the catastrophe had occurred; had they 
started but an hour or two earlier from Jerusalem his fate might have 
been theirs. Glad at their own good fortune, they hurry on, finding 
many an excuse besides the real one for their neglect. 

How then are we exactly to characterize their conduct ? It wa3 
a triumph of prejudice over humanity — the very kind of error and of 
crime against which Jesus wished to guard the inquiring lawyer. And 
it was at once with singular fidelity to nature, and the strictest perti- 
nence to the question with which he was dealing, and to the occasion 
that called it forth, that it was in the conduct of a priest and of a 
Levite that this triumph stood displayed — for were they not the 
fittest types and representatives of that malign and sinister influence 
which their religion — misunderstood and misapplied — had exerted 
over the common sympathies of humanity? Had they read aright 
their own old Hebrew code, it would have taught them quite a 
different lesson. Its broad and genial humanity is one of the marked 
attributes by which, as compared with that of every other religion 
then existing, theirs was distinguished. "I will have mercy and 
not sacrifice," was the motto which its great Author had inscribed 
upon its forehead. Its weightier matters were judgment and mercy, 
and faith and love. It had taken the stranger under its speciaJ 
and benignant protection. Twice over it had proclaimed, "Thou 
shalt not see thv brother's ass or thy brother's ox fall down by the 
way and hide thyself from them — thou shalt surely help him to lift 
them up again.' And was a man not much better than an ass or ab 
ox? And should not this priest and Levite — had they read aright 
their own Jewish law — have lifted up again their prostrate bleeding 
brother? But they had misread that law. They had misconceived 



£36 THJL LIFE OF CHKIST. 

and perverted that segregation from all the other communities of the 
earth which it had taught the Jewish people to cultivate. Instead of 
seeing in this temporary isolation the means of distributing the bless- 
ings of the Messiah's kingdom wide over all the earth, they Lad 
regarded it as raising them to a position of proud superiority from 
w T hich they might say to every other nation, " Stand back, for we are 
holier than you." And once perverted thus, the whole strength of 
their religious faith went to intensify the spirit of nationality, and 
inflame it into a passion, within whose close and sultry atmosphere 
the lights even of common human kindness were extinguished. It 
was in a priest and in a Levite that we should expect to see this 
spirit carried out to its extreme degree, as it has been always in the 
priestly caste that the fanatical piety which has trampled under foot 
Hie kindliest sentiments of humanity has shown itself in its darkest 
and most repulsive form. 

After the jjriest and Levite have gone by, a certain Samaritan 
approaches. He too is arrested. He too turns aside to look upon 
this pitiable spectacle. For aught that he can tell, this naked wound- 
ed man may be a Jew. There were many Jews and but few Samari- 
tans travelhng ordinarily by this road. The chances were a thousand 
to one that he was a Jew. And this Samaritan must have shared in 
the common feelings of his people towards the Jews — hatred repay- 
ing hatred. But he thinks not of distinction of race or faith. The 
sight before him of a human being — a brother man in the extremity 
of distress — swallow's up all such thoughts. As soon as he sees him 
he has compassion on him. He alights — strips off a portion of his 
own raiment — brings out the oil and the wine that he had provided 
for his own comfort by the way — tenderly binds up the wounds — 
gently lifts the body up and places it on his own beast — moves with 
such gentle pace away as shall least exasperate the recent wounds. 
Intent upon his task, he forgets his own affairs — forgets the danger 
of lingering so long in such a neighborhood — is not satisfied until he 
reaches the inn by the roadside. Having done so much, may he not 
leave him now? No, he cannot part with him till he sees what a 
night's rest will do. The morning sees his rescued brother better. 
Now he may depart. Yes, but not till he has done all he can to 
secure that he be properly waited on till all danger is over. He may 
be a humane enough man, the keeper of this inn, but days will pass 
before the sufferer can safely travel, and it may not be safe or wise 
to count upon the continuance of his kindness. The Samaritan gives 
the innkeeper enough to keep his guest for six or seven days, and 
tells biro that whatever he. spends more will be repaid. H.fving 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 437 

thus done all that the most thoughtful kindness could suggest to 
promote and secure recovery, he goes to bid his rescued brother fare- 
well. Perhaps the good Samaritan leaves him in utter ignorance of 
who or what he was. Perhaps those pale and trembling lips are still 
unable to articulate his thanks — but that parting look in which a 
heart's whole swelling gratitude goes out — it goes with him and kirn 
dies a strange joy. He never saw the sun look half so bright — he 
never saw the plain of Jordan look half so fair — a happier man than 
he never trod the road to Jericho. True, he had lost a day, but he 
had saved a brother ; and while many a time in after life the look of 
that stark and bleeding body as he first saw it lying on the roadside 
would come to haunt his fancy — ever behind it would there come that 
look of love and gratitude to chase the spectral form away, and fill 
his heart with light and joy. 

Here too is a triumph, not one, however, of prejudice over humanity, 
but of humanity over prejudice. For it were idle to think that it was 
because of any superiority over the priest and the Levite in his abstract 
ideas of the sphere of neighborhood, and of the claims involved in 
simple participation of humanity, that this Samaritan acted as he 
did. No, it was simply because he obeyed the impulses of a kind 
and loving heart, and that these were strong enough to lift him above 
all those prejudices of tribe and caste and faith, to which he, equally 
with the Jew, was liable. 

And was there not good reason for it, that in the records of our 
Christian faith, in the teachings of its Divine Author, one solemn 
warning of this kind should be lifted up — one illustrious example of 
this kind should be exhibited? Our Redeemer came to establish 
another and closer bond of brotherhood than the earth before had 
known, to knit all true believers in the pure and holy fellowship of a 
common faith, a common hope, a common heirship of eternal life 
through him. But he would have us from the beginning know that 
this bond, so new, so sacred, so divine, was never meant to thwart 
or violate that other broader universal tie that binds the whole family 
of our race together, that makes each man the neighbor of every 
other man that tenants this earthly globe. Christianity, like Juda- 
ism, has been perverted — perverted so as seriously to interfere with, 
sometimes almost entirely to quench, the sentiment of a universal 
philanthropy ; but it has been so only when its true genius and spirit 
have been misapprehended ; for of all influences that have ever de- 
scended upon our earth, none has ever done so much to break down 
the walls of separation, that differences of country, language, race, 
religion, have raised between man and man, and to diffuse the spirit 



438 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

of that brotherly love which overleaps all these temporary and 
artificial fences and boundary lines — which, subject to no law 
of limits, is a law itself — which, like the air and light of heaven, 
diffuses itself everywhere around over the broad field of humanity — 
tempering all, uniting all, brightening all, smoothing asperities, 
harmonizing discords, pouring a healing balm into all the rankling 
sores of life. 

" Which now of the three," said Jesus to the lawyer, " was neigh- 
bor to him that fell among the thieves? " 

Ashamed to say plainly " The Samaritan," yet unwilling or unable 
to exhibit any hesitation in his reply, he said, " He that showed mercy 
on him." Then said Jesus unto him, " Go, and do thou likewise." It is 
not " Listen and applaud," it is " Go and do." If there be anything 
above another that distinguishes the conduct of the good Samaritan, 
it is its thoroughly practical character. He wasted no needless sym- 
pathy, he shed no idle tears. There are wounds that may be dressed — 
he puts forth his own hand immediately to the dressing of them. 
There is a life that may be saved — he sets himself to use every method 
by which it may be saved. He gives more than time, more than 
money: he gives personal service. And that is the true human char- 
ity that shows itself in prompt, efficient, self-forgetful, self-sacrificing 
help. You can get many soft, susceptible, sentimental spirits to weep 
over any scene or tale of woe. But it is not those who will weep the 
readiest over the sorrow who will do the most to relieve it. Sympathy 
has its own selfishness; there is a luxury in the tears that it loves idly 
to indulge. Tears will fill the eye — should fill the eye — but the hand 
of active help will brush them away, that the eye may see more 
clearly what the hand has to do. Millions have heard or read the tale 
of the Good Samaritan. Their eyes have glistened and their hearts 
have been all aglow in approving, applauding sympathy; but of all 
these millions, how many are there who imitate the example given, 
who have given a day from their business to a suffering brother, who 
have waited by the sick, and with their own hand have ministered to 
his wants? 

The beauty and force of that special lesson which the story of 
the Good Samaritan was intended to convey is mightily enhanced as 
we remember how recently our Lord himself had suffered from the 
intolerance of the Samaritans; only a few days before, we know not 
how few, having been refused entrance into one of their villages. 
He himself then gave an exhibition of the very virtue he designed to 
inculcate. But why speak of this as any single minor act of universal 
love to mankind on his part? Were not his life and death one con- 
tinuous manifestation of that love? Yes, bright as that single act of 



THE LORD S PRAYEK. 439 

the Good Samaritan shines in the annals of human kindness, all its 
brightness fades away in the full blaze of that love of Jesus, which 
saw not a single traveller, but our whole race, cast forth naked, bleed * 
ing, dying, and gave not a day of his time, nor a portion of his rai- 
ment, but a whole lifetime of service and of suffering, that they might 
not perish, but have everlasting life. 



XII. 

The Lord's Prayer.* 

At some time and in some place of which we must be content to 
remain ignorant, Jesus had gone apart from his disciples to pray. 
They had noticed his doing so frequently before ; but there was a 
peculiarity in this case. He had either separated himself from them 
by so short a distance, or they had come upon him afterwards so 
silently and unobserved, that they stood and listened to him as he 
prayed. Perhaps they had never previously overheard our Lord 
when engaged in private devotion. The impression made on them 
was so deep, the prayer that they had been listening to was so unlike 
any that they themselves had ever offered — if that and that only be 
prayer, they feel they know so little how to pray — that, on the im- 
pulse of the moment, one of them, when Jesus had ceased, said to 
him, " Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.'' 
We do not stand in the same peculiar external circumstances with 
him who preferred this request, but the same need is ours There is 
access still for us into the presence of our Redeemer, nor is there in 
coming to him one petition that should spring more quickly to our 
lips, one that can come from them more appropriately, than this — 
"Lord, teadh us to pray." To pray is to realize the presence of the 
Supreme — to come into the closest possible connection with the 
greatest of Beings. To pray is to lay our imperfect tribute of ac- 
knowledgment at his feet — to supplicate for that which we know that 
he only can bestow — -to bring our sin to him, so that it may be f< >r- 
given — our wants to him, so that he may supply them as seems best 
in his sight. What is out warrant for making such approach? how 
may it best be made? what should we ask for? and how should we 
&sk for it? None can answer these questions for us as Jesus could. 
How glairy, then, should we welcome, and how carefully should we 
study such answers as he has been pleased to give! 

« Luke 11 : 1-13. 



440 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

On bringing together all that Christ has declared in the way of 
precept, and illustrated in the way of example, I think it will appear 
that as there is no one duty of the religious life of such preeminent 
importance in its direct bearing on our spiritual estate, so there is no 
one about the manner of whose right discharge fuller instructions 
have been left by him. Thus, in the instance now before us, in answer 
to the request presented to him, he at once recited a pra3^er, which 
stands as the pattern or model of all true prayer. Without entering 
into a minute examination of the separate clauses of this prayer, 
let me crave your attention to three of the features by which it is 
preeminently distinguished. 

1. Its shortness and simplicity . It is very plain; not a part or 
petition of it which, as soon as it is capable of praying, a child can- 
not easily understand. It is very brief, occupying but a minute or 
two in the utterance; so that there is not a season or occasion for 
prayer in which it might not be employed. There is no ambiguity, 
no circumlocution, no expansion, no repetition here. It is through- 
out the direct expression of desire; that desire in each case clothing 
itself in the simplest, compactest form of speech. In the Sermon on 
the Mount, when Jesus first repeated this prayer, he offered it in 
contrast with the tedious amplifications and reiterations of which the 
Jewish and heathen prayers were then ordinarily composed. The 
Jews, as the heathen of old, as the Mussulmans still, had their set 
hours throughout the day for prayer; and so fond were they of ex- 
hibiting the punctuality and precision and devoutness with which the 
duty was discharged, that they often arranged it so that the set hour 
should find them in some public place. Such practice, as altogether 
contrary to the spirit and object of true devotion, as part of that 
mere dead formalism which it was the great object of his teaching to 
unmask, Jesus utterly condemned. "When thou prayest, thou shalt 
not be as the hypocrites; for they love to pray standing in the syna- 
gogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. 
Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou 
prayest, enter into thy closet; and when thou hast shut thy door, 
pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father, which seeth 
in secret, shall reward thee openly. But when ye pray, use not vain 
repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard 
for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for 
your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask him. 
After this manner pray ye." It was as an antidote to the kind of 
prayers then generally employed, as well as a pattern specimen for 
after use within the Church, that Jesus then proceeded to repeat the 



THE LORD'S PRAYER. 441 

prayer which has been called by his name. It was not to fte by or be 
deposited as a mere standard measure by which other prayers were 
to be tried. It was to be used — to be repeated. When, many months 
after its first recital, it was said to Jesus, " Lord, teach us to pray, as 
John also taught his disciples," he was not satisfied with saying 
u Pray generally in such a mode or style as this ;" he prescribed the 
rery words, " When ye pray, say" and he repeated the very prayer 
that he formerly had spoken. Not that he put much or any import- 
ance upon the exact words to be employed. In three out of the six 
petitions of which the prayer is made up, there are variations in the 
words, not enough to make the slightest difference in the meaning, 
but sufficient to show that it was not simply by a repetition of the 
words that the prayer was truly offered. With rigorous exactness, 
this prayer might be said over and over again till it became a very 
vain repetition — all the vainer, perhaps, because of the very excellence 
of the form that was so abused. But over and over again — day by 
day — it might be repeated without any such abuse. All depends 
upon how you use it. Enter into its meaning — put your own soul 
and their own sense into the words — let it be the true and earnest 
desires of your heart that you thus breathe into the ear of the Eter- 
nal — and you need not fear how often you repeat it, or think that 
because you say the same words over again you sin. Our Lord him 
self, within the compass of an hour, repeated the same prayer thrice 
in the garden. Use it, however, as a mere form, with no other idea 
than that because it has been "authoritatively prescribed" it ought 
to be employed — a single such use of it is sin. 

2. The order and proportion of the petitions in the Lord's prayei. 
It naturally divides itself into two equal parts ; the one embracing 
the first three petitions, the other the three remaining ones — these 
parts palpably distinguished from each other by this, that in the 
former the petitions all have reference to God, in the latter to man 
In the former the thoughts and desires of the petitioner are all 
engrossed with the name, the kingdom, the will of the grea*t Being 
addressed ; in the latter with his own wants, and sins, and trials. It 
would be carrying the idea of the Lord's prayer as a pattern, or 
model, to an illegitimate length, were we to say that because about 
one-half of the prayer is devoted to the first of these objects, and one 
half t: the other, our prayers should be divided equally between 
hem. Yet surely there is something to be learned from the prece- 
dence assigned here to the great things which concern the name, an A 
kingdom, and will of our Heavenly Father, as well as from the space 
which these occupy in this prayer. You have but to reflect a moment 



442 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

on the structure and proportion of parts in any of our ordinary pray- 
ers, whether in private or in public, and especially on the place and 
room given in them to petitions touching the coming of God's king- 
dom, and the doing of his will on earth as it is done in heaven, to be 
satisfied as to the contrast which in this respect they present to the 
model laid down by Christ himself. Our prayers, such as they are, 
with all their weaknesses and imperfections, will not, we are grateful 
to remember, be cast out because we yield to a strong natural bias, 
and cast into the foreground, and keep prominent throughout, those 
personal necessities of our spiritual nature which primarily urge us 
to the throne of grace. Our Heavenly Father not only knoweth what 
things we need before we ask them, he knoweth also what the things 
are, the need of which presses first and heaviest upon our hearts. 
Nor will he close his ear to any returning, repentant, hungering, and 
thirsting spirit, simply because these are pressed first and most 
urgently upon his regard. Is it not well, nevertheless, that we should 
be reminded, as the prayer dictated by our Saviour so emphatically 
does, that selfishness may and does creep into our very prayers, and 
that the perfect form of all right approach, all right address, to the 
Divinity, is that in which the place of supremacy which of right be- 
longs to Him is duly and becomingly recognized. More especially 
should it be so in all prayers that go up from this sinful earth t< 
those pure and holy heavens ; for if it be true — as the whole body o. 
the prayer prescribed by Jesus teaches us that it is — that we are liv- 
ing in a world where God's name is not hallowed as it ought to be, is 
often dishonored and profaned — in a world where God's kingdom of 
justice and holiness and love is not universally established, where 
another and quite opposite kingdom contests with it the empire of 
human souls — in a world where other wills than that of God are 
busily at work, not always consenting to or working under his, but 
resisting and opposing it; — then surely if the name, the kingdom, 
the will of our Father which is in heaven were as dear to us as they 
ought to be, first and above all things besides, we should desire that 
his name should be hallowed, his kingdom should come, his will 
should be done on earth as it is done in heaven. Let us then as 
often as we use this prayer receive with meekness the rebuke it casts 
upon that tendency and habit of our nature which leads us even in 
our prayers to put our own things before the things of our Heavenly 
Father; and let us urge our laggard spirits onward and upward from 
the sense and sight of our personal necessities, till, filled with adora- 
tion, and gratitude, and love, before we even make mention before 
him of a single individual want, we be ready with a true heart to say, 



THE LORD S PRAYER. 413 

"Our Father ^ which art in heaven, hallowed be thy Lime; thy king- 
dom come ; thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven." 

And while receiving the lesson clearly to be gathered from the 
place and space occupied by the first three petitions of our Lord's 
prayer, let its fourth petition, in its sequence and in its solitariness, 
and in its narrowness, proclaim to us the place even among our owk 
things which earthly and bodily, as compared with spiritual pro- 
visions, possessions, enjoyments, ought to have. Is it without a 
meaning that we are taught to pray first, " Thy will be done," and 
then immediately thereafter, "Give us this day our daily bread"? 
The bread is to be asked that by it the life may be preserved, and 
the life is to be preserved that it may be consecrated to the doing of 
God's will. According to the tenor of the prayer and the connection 
of these two petitions, we are not at liberty to ask for the daily bread 
irrespective of the object to which the life and strength which it pro- 
longs and imparts are to be devoted. It were a vain and hollow 
thing in any of us to pray that God's will be done, as in heaven, so 
on earth, if we do not desire and strive that it should be done, as by 
others, so also by ourselves. And it is as those who do thus desire, 
and are thus striving, that we are alone at all likely to proceed to 
say, " Give us this day our daily bread." A natural and moderate 
request, we may be ready to think, which all men will at once be 
prepared to present to God. Yet not so easy to present in the spirit 
in which Jesus would have us offer it. Not so easy to feel our con- 
tinued and entire dependence on God for those very things that we 
are most tempted to think we have acquired by our own exertions, 
and secured to ourselves and our families by our own skill and pru- 
dence. Not so easy to pray for a competent portion of the things of 
this life, only that by the manner of our using and enjoying them the 
will of our Heavenly Father, his own gracious purpose in placing us 
where we are placed, and in giving us all that we possess, may be 
carried out. Not so easy to limit thus our desires and efforts in this 
direction, and to be satisfied with whatever the portion be that God 
pleases to bestow. Not so easy to renew this petition, day by day, 
as conscious that all which comes each day comes direct from the 
1 1 and of God — comes to those who have no right or title to claim it 
as their own — who should ask and receive it continually as a gift 
Not so easy to narrow the petition to the d£y, leaving to-morrow i*u 
God's hands. The simplest and easiest, though it seems at first, of 
all the six petitions, perhaps this one abc 1 1 our daily bread is one 
that we less frequently than any other present in the true spirit. It 
stands there in the very centre of the prayer — the only one boar- 



444 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

ing upon our earthly condition — preceded and followed by others, 
with whose spirit it must or ought to be impregnated — from which it 
cannot be detached. Secular in its first aspect, in this connection 
how spiritual does it appear! 

3. The fulness, condensedness, comprehensiveness, universality of 
the prayer. Of course it never was intended to confine within the 
limits of its few sentences the free spirit of prayer. The example of 
our Lord himself, of the apostles, of the Church in all ages, has taught 
ns how full and varied are the utterances of the human heart, when 
it breathes itself out unrestrainedly unto God in prayer. Where the 
Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty — ample the freedom and wide 
the range that the Holy Spirit takes when he throws the human 
spirit into the attitude, and sustains it in the exercise of prayer — 
prompting those yearnings which cannot be uttered, those desires 
and affections which words multiplied to the uttermost fail adequately 
to express. In the past history, in the existing condition of every 
human soul, there is an infinitude of individual peculiarities To 
forbid all references to these, all manifestations of these in prayer — 
to tie every one down at every season to pray as every one else — to 
allow no minute confession of particular transgressions, no recital of 
the circumstances in which they were committed, aggravations by 
which they were accompanied, no acknowledgment of special mercies, 
nor glad and grateful recounting how singularly appropriate and sat- 
isfying they had been — to cramp down within one dry and narrow 
mould all the plaints of sorrow, the moanings of penitence, the aspi- 
rations of desire, the beatings of gratitude, the breathings of love, the 
exultations of joy and hope, which fill the human heart, and which, 
in moments of filial trust, it would pour out into the ear of the 
Eternal — this were indeed to lay the axe at the root of all devotion. 
But while pleading for the very fullest liberty of prayer, let us not be 
insensible of the great benefit there is in ever and anon stepping out 
of that circle in which our own personal and particular sorrows and 
sins shape and intensify our prayers, into that upper and wider region 
in which, laying all those specialties for the time aside, we join the 
great company of the prayerful in all ages, in those few and simple, 
yet all-embracing petitions which they and we, and all that have 
gone before, and all that shall come after, unite in presenting to the 
Hearer and Answerer of prayer. And this is what we do in repeating 
the Lord's prayer. In it we have, stripped of all secondary or ad- 
ventitious elements, the concentrated spirit and essence of prayer, a 
brief epitome of all the topics that prayer should embrace, a con- 
densed expression of all those desires of the heart that should go up 



THE LOED'S PRAYER. 445 

to God in prayer. It is not a prayer this for any one period of life — 
for any one kind of character — for any one outward or inward con- 
dition of things — for anyone country — for any one age. The child may 
lisp its simple sentences as soon as it knows how to pray; it comes 
with no less fitness from the wrinkled lips of age. The penitent in 
the first hour of his return to God, the straggler in the thick of U&e 
spiritual conflict, the believer in the highest soarings of his faith and 
love, may take up and use alike this prayer. The youngest, tli6 
oldest, the simplest, the wisest, the most sin-stained, the most saintly, 
can find nothing here unsuitable, unseasonable. It gathers up into 
one what they all can and should unite in saying as they bend in 
supplication before God. And from the day when first it was pub- 
lished on the mount, as our Lord's own directory for prayer, down 
through all these eighteen centuries, it has been the single golden 
link running through the ages that has bound together in one the 
whole vast company of the prayerful. Is there a single Christian 
now living upon earth — is there ons among the multitude of the re- 
deemed now praising God in heaven, who never prayed this prayer ? 
I believe not one. It is not then, as isok^ted spirits, alone in our 
communion with God, it is as units in that unnumbered congregation 
of those who have bent, are bending, will bend, before the Throne, 
that we are to take up and to use this prayer. Not " my Father," 
but " our Father," is its key-note. Let it calm, and soothe, and ele- 
vate our spirits, as, leaving all that belongs to our own little separate 
circle of thoughts, and doubts, and fears, and hopes, and joys, be- 
hind, we rise to take our place in this vast company, and to mingle 
our prayers with theirs. 

And to what is it that the Lord's prayer owes especially the uni- 
versality of its embrace — the omnipotence of its power? To the 
special character in which it presents God to all — the peculiar stand- 
ing before him into which it invites all to enter. It is not to him as 
the great I am, the Omnipotent, the Omnipresent Creator and Lord 
of all ; it is not to him as dwelling in the light that no man can 
approach to— as clothed with all the attributes of majesty and power, 
and justice, and truth, and holiness, the Moral Governor of the Uni- 
verse — that it invites us to come. No, but to him as our Father in 
heaven — a Father regarding us with infinite pity, loving us with au 
everlasting love, willing and waiting to bestow, able ar.d ready to 
help us. It is to him who taught us this prayer that we owe the 
revelation of God to us as such a Father. More than that, it is to 
Christ we owe the establishment of that close and endearing con- 
nection of sonship to the Father — a connection which it only remains 



446 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

for us to recognize, in order to enter into possession of all its fnivi- 
leges and joys. He who taught this prayer to his disciples, taught 
them, too, that no man can come unto the Father but through him. 
Tt were a great injustice unto him, if, because he has not named his 
jwn name in this prayer, we should forget that it is he who, by his 
Incarnation and Atonement, has so linked God and man, earth and 
heaven, together, that all those sentiments of filial trust and con- 
fidence which this prayer expresses, may and should be cherished by 
every individual member of our race. There is not a living man who 
may not use this prayer ; for while it is true that no man cometh to 
the Father but through Christ, it is equally true — indeed the one 
truth is involved in the other — that all men, every man, may now so 
come ; not waiting till he is sure that he is a child of God, has such 
faith in God, or gratitude to God, or willingness to serve God as he 
knows a child should cherish ; not grounding his assurance of God's 
Fatherhood to him on his sonship to God — no, but welcoming the 
assurance given to him in and by Jesus Christ, that God is his Father, 
and using that very Fatherhood as his plea in his first and last, his 
every approach to him. To each and every one of the multitude 
upon the mountain-side of Galilee — to them just as they were — to 
them simply as sons of men, partakers of that humanity which he 
also shared, Jesus said, " God is your Father, treat him as your 
Father, commend your future to him, cast all your care upon him as 
such." " Take no thought, saying, What shall we eat ? or, What 
shall we drink ? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed ? Your heavenly 
Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things." Pray to 
him as such, then. " When thou pray est, pray to thy Father which 
seeth in secret." After this manner pray ye — " Our Father which 
art in heaven." And what Jesus said to the multitude on the moun- 
tain-side, he says to every child of Adam. Was it not indeed upon 
the existence and character of that very relationship of God to us 
and to all men that Jesus grounded the assurance he would have us 
cherish that our prayers shall not, cannot, go up in vain to haaven ? 
For it is worthy of remark that on both occasions when this prayer 
was recited within the compass of the same discourse, shortly after 
he had repeated it — as if his thoughts were returning to the subject, 
and he wished to fix firm in the hearts of his disciples a faith in the 
efficacy of such prayer — he added, "I say unto you, Ask, and it shall 
be given ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto 
you. For every one that asketh " — asks as I have told you he should, 
or for what I have told you he should — "every one that asketh, 
receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knoeketh, it 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 447 

shall be opened. If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a 
father, will he give him a stone ? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish 
give him a serpent? . ... If ye, then, being evil, know how to give 
good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Heaven lr 
Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him*" 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 



The first period of Christ in Persea, just passed in review, embraced 
a wide range of activities and teachings. During the sojourn in Persea 
next occurring, now under consideration, Jesus is found for the most 
part at one place — the region where he had met and been baptized 
by John and where he had won his first disciples. The people con- 
tinued to come to him, but there seems to be no constraint of outward 
circumstances accounting for our Lord's delay when he received the 
tidings of Lazarus' sickness. His tarrying for two days appears to 
have been due to an inward sense of the Father's will. Then, as soon 
as the hour comes that opens the way, Jesus proceeds to Bethany with 
his disciples. Just outside the village Jesus first talks with Martha 
and then with Mary, his words containing some of his greatest utterances 
on death, life, and immortality. Then occurs Christ's supreme miracle 
of the resurrection of Lazarus. But before the life-giving words are 
spoken three things should be noted: first, the sensitiveness and 
sympathy of Jesus shown in the tears which he sheds; second, the 
recognition in his audible prayer that he is the Sent of the Father, the 
Son of God; third, the use of human agency in the rolling away of the 
stone and the loosening of the cerements of the tomb. 

This third feature suggests the great practical lesson of the place 
and the value of human service in the work of arousing and upbuilding 
human souls. It is not ours to see the awakening of the body from 
death, but it is possible to witness the quickening of souls, and in this 
work those who possess the new life have an essential part. It is true 
that the divine, life-giving energy must come from God, but obstruc- 
tions that hinder its reaching the hearts of the unsaved can be 
removed by the sympathetic and tactful agency of Christian friends. 
And when souls are restored to life, the people of faith can do much 
to free them from the fettering bands of old habits, the limitations of 
ignorance and prejudice, and to open the way to their progress and 
complete freedom in the activities of the new nature. 

This startling deed of Christ's power was performed so near to 
Jerusalem and in such a public manner that it offered an immediate 
challenge to the ruling classes represented by both the Pharisees and 



447a THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

the Sadducees, and in a meeting of the Sanhedrim it was decreed that 
Jesus must die as a sacrifice required by a policy of national safety. 
These leaders were moved simply by ideas of official self-interest, 
and in their dooming of Christ to death they supposed that they were 
merely carrying out a plan of far-reaching political strategy, by which 
at one stroke they would dispose of their enemy and insure their con- 
tinued autonomy as a people. Caiaphas their chief saw not at all 
the deeper implications of his statement that it was expedient that 
one man should die for the people, and yet he was uttering in uncon- 
scious prophecy the tremendous principle of sacrifice that is central 
in the atonement. The idea of Caiaphas with the motive with which 
he voiced it subtracted nothing from the guilt of these jugglers with 
life and justice. It is only another instance of God taking up the 
issues of an evil man's action and directing them into the stream of 
his own purposes of redemption, of making even the wrathful intentions 
of men to praise him. 



PART III. MAIN MINISTRY IN JUDEA AND PER^A. 
Study 14. Supreme Miracle of the Raising of Lazarus. 

(1) Message reaching Christ in Per,ea 4476 

a. He is to some degree in seclusion 4476 

6. Martha and Mary send word that Lazarus is sick 4476 

(2) Christ's immediate words and the journey 4476-451 

a. An assuring but enigmatic reply 4476, 448 

6. Statements of the disciples 448-451 

c. Their journey to Bethany 451 

(3) Words to the sisters when he arrives 451-458 

a. Interview with Martha • 451-458 

6. Interview with Mary 458 

(4) The raising of Lazarus 458-461 

a. Christ's sympathy and tears 458, 459 

6. Approach to the grave 460 

c. Removal of the stone 460 

d. Prayer of Christ 460, 461 

e. Command to come forth 461 

/. Lazarus rises and stands erect 461 

g. Christ bids that he be loosed 461 

(5) Lessons of the miracle 461-463 

a. Earthly and heavenly factors in work 461, 462 

6. Human and divine elements in Christ 462 

c. In him we find both sympathy and succor 462, 463 



JESUS THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE. 4476 

(6) Action of the Jewish authorities 463-466 

a. A meeting of the Sanhedrim called 463 

b. Pharisees and Sadducees make common cause 463, 464 

c. View of political effect of Christ's continued activity 464, 465 

d. Unwitting prophecy of Caiaphas 465, 466 

e. Decision of Sanhedrim for Christ's death 465 



XIII. 

Jesus the Resurrection and the Life. 

Christ's first visit to Persea, od Lis way up to the Feast of Dedi- 
cation, was one of much locomotion and manifold activities. His 
second was dedicated rather to seclusion and repose. He retired to 
one chosen and hallowed spot — the place where John at first bap- 
tized — where he himself had first entered on his public ministry. 
Many resorted to him there, and many believed on him, but he did 
not go about as he had done before. Living in quiet with his dis- 
ciples, a message came to him from Bethany. Some sore malady 
had seized upon Lazarus. His sisters early think of that kind friend, 
who they knew had cured so many others, and who surely would not 
be unwilling to succor them in their distress, and heal their brother ; 
but they knew what had driven him lately from Jerusalem, and are 
unwilling to break in upon his retirement, or ask him to expose him- 
self once more to the deadly hatred of his enemies. The disease runs 
on its course; Lazarus is on the very point of death. They can 
refrain no longer. They send off a messenger to Jesus. No urgent 
entreaty, however, is conveyed that he should hasten to their relief. 
No course is dictated. No desire even expressed. They think it is 
not needed. They remember all the kindnesses they had already 
experienced at his hands — how often he had made their house his 
home— what special marks of personal attachment and regard he 
had shown to themselves and to their brother. They deem it enough, 
therefore, to bid their messenger say, as soon as he met Jesus, 
"Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick." Jesus hears the message, 
and, without giving any other indication of his purpose, simply says, 
"This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the 
Son of God might be glorified thereby." This is all the answer thai 
he makes to a message so simply and delicately expressed; by thai 
very simplicity and delicacy making all the stronger appeal to his 
sympathy. Nothing more being said by Jesus, nor anything furthei 
o John 10 • 39-42 ; 11 : 1-27. 



448 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

apparently intended to be done, the messenger of the anxious sisters 
has to be satisfied with this. It seems to be so far satisfactory : 
"This sickness is not unto death." Jesus either knows that Lazarus 
is to recover, or he is to take some method of averting death — is to 
cure him; may have already done so by a Avord spoken — a volition 
formed at a distance. Treasuring up the sentence that he has heard 
uttered, and extracting from it such comfort as he can, the messengei 
returns to Bethany, and Jesus remains still two days in the place 
where he was. During these two days the incidents of the message 
and the answer fail not to be the subject of frequent converse among 
the disciples. They too might understand it to be the reason of 
their Master's saying and doing nothing further in the matter, that 
he was aware that the death the sisters dreaded was not to happen; 
or they too might think that his great power had already been exerted 
on behalf of one whom they knew he loved so much. So might they 
interpret the saying, "This sickness is not unto death;" but what can 
they make of those other words by which these had been followed 
up? How could it be said of this sickness of Lazarus, whether it 
left him naturally or was removed by a mysterious exercise of their 
Master's powers of healing, that it was to be "for the glory of God, 
that the Son of God might be glorified thereby" ? This was saying 
a great deal more of the illness, however cured, than, so far as they 
can see, could be truly and fitly said of it. No further explanation, 
however, is made by Jesus, and they must wait the issue. 

Two days afterwards Jesus calmly and resolutely, but somewhat 
abruptly and unexpectedly, says to them, "Let us go into Judea 
again." Though nothing was said or hinted about the object of the 
proposed visit, it would be very natural that the disciples should con- 
nect it with the message that had come from Bethany. But if it 
was to cure Lazarus that Christ was going, why had he not gone 
sooner? If the sickness that had been reported to him was not unto 
death, why go at all? why expose himself afresh to the malice of 
those who were evidently bent upon his destruction? ,; Master,' 
they say to him, " the Jews of late sought to stone thee, and goest 
thou thither again?" a remonstrance dictated by a sincere and laud- 
able solicitude for their Master's safety, yet not without ingredients 
of ignorance and mistrust. "Are there not," said Jesus in reply, 
"twelve hours in the day?" 'My time for working, for the doing 
the will of my Father which is in heaven, is it not a set time, its 
bounds as fixed as those of the natural day, having, like it, its twelve 
hours, that no man can take from and no man can add to? The 
hours of this my allotted period for finishing my earthly work must 



JESUS THE BESURRECTION AND THE LIFE. 449 

rtm out their course ; and while they are running, so long as I am 
upon the path marked out for me, walking by the light that comes 
from heaven, they cannot be shortened, go where I may ; so long as 
I go under my Father's guidance, so long as I do what he desires, 
my life is safe. True, eleven hours of this my day may be already 
gone ; I may have entered upon the last and twelfth, but till it end 
a shield of defence is round me that none can break through. Fear 
not for me then, till that twelfth hour strike I am as safe in Judea as 
here. And for your own comfort, know that what is true of me is 
true of every man who walks in God's own light — the light that the 
guiding Spirit gives to every man — kindled within his soul to direct 
him through all his earthly work. If any man walk in that light, he 
will not, cannot stumble, or fall, or perish ; but if he walk in the night, 
go where he is not called, do what he is not bidden, then he stumbleth, 
because there is no light in him. He has turned the day into night, 
and the doom of the night-traveller hangs over him.' 

He pauses to let these weighty truths sink deep into the disciples' 
hearts, then, turning to them, he says, " Our friend Lazarus sleepeth, 
but I go that I may awake him out of sleep." In their anxiety about 
their Master they had forgotten their absent friend whose love to Jesus 
had flowed over upon them, to whom they also were attached. How 
humanly, how tenderly does the phrase " our friend Lazarus " recall 
him to their thoughts ! It would seem as if the ties that knit our 
Lord to the members of that family at Bethany had been formed for 
this as for other reasons, to show how open the heart of Jesus was, 
not merely to a universal love to all mankind, but to the more pecu- 
liar and specific affections of friendship. Among the twelve there 
was one whom he particularly loved ; among the families he visited 
there was one to which he was particularly attached. Outside the 
circle of his immediate followers there was one whom he called his 
friend. Had he not already so distinctly said that his sickness was not 
unto death, the disciples, remembering that he had said of Jairus' 
daughter, " she is not dead, but sleepeth," might at first have caught 
the true meaning of their Master's words ; but the idea of the death of 
Lazarus is so far from their thoughts, that they put the first interpre- 
tation on them that occurs, and without thinking on the worse than 
trifling end that they were thus attributing to Christ as the declared 
purpose of his proposed visit, they say, "Lord, if he sleep, he shall 
do well." Then said Jesus unto them plainly, " Lazarus is dead ; and 
I tun glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may 
believe; nevertheless let us go unto him." Glad that he was not 
there ! Yes, for it spared him the pain of looking at his friend in his 

Uf« o» Christ. 29 



450 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

agony, at his sisters in their grief. Glad ; for had he been there, 
could he have resisted the appeal of such a deathbed over which 
such mourners were bending ? Could he, though meaning afterwards 
to raise him from the dead, have stood by and seen Lazarus depart ? 
Glad that he was not there! Was he insensible, then, to all the 
pangs which that departure must have cost Martha and Mary — this 
one among the rest, that he was not there, and had not come when 
sent for? Was he insensible to the four days' weeping for the dead 
that his absence had entailed ? Glad that he was not there ! Had 
the mourning sisters heard the words, they might have fancied that 
his affection for their family had suffered a sudden chill. But there 
was no lack of sensibilitj 7 to their sufferings ; his sympathies with 
them had suffered no reverse. It was not that he loved or pitied 
them the less. It was that his sympathies, instead of resting on the 
single household of Bethany, were taking in the wider circle of his 
discipleship, and through them, or along with them, the whole family 
of our sinful, suffering humanity. It was with a calm, deliberate 
forethought that, on hearing of the sickness, he allowed two days to 
pass without any movement made to Bethany. He knew when Laz- 
arus died — knew that he had died two days before he told his disci- 
ples of it, for the death, followed by speedy burial, must have occurred 
soon after the messenger left Bethany, in all likelihood before he 
reached the place where Jesus was; for if a day's journey carried 
the messenger (as it might have done to Bethabara), and another 
such day of travel carried Jesus and his disciples back again to Beth- 
any, as Lazarus was four days in the grave when Jesus reached the 
spot, his decease must have taken place within a very short time 
after the original despatch of the message. Knowing when it hap- 
pened, Jesus did not desire to be present at it — deliberately arranged 
it so that it should not be till four days after the interment that he 
should appear in Bethany. He had already in remote Galilee raised 
two from the dead — one soon after death, the other before burial. 
But now, in the immediate neighborhood of Jerusalem, in presence 
of a mixed company of friends and enemies, he has resolved, in rais- 
ing Lazarus, to perform the great closing, crowning miracle of his 
ministry ; and he will do it so that not the most captious or the most 
incredulous can question the reality either of the death or of the res- 
urrection. It was to be our Lord's last public appearance among the 
Jews previous to his crucifixion. It was to be the last public miracle 
he was to be permitted to work. From the day that this great deed 
was done was to date the formal resolution of the Sanhedrim to put 
him to death. This close connection of the raising of Lazarus with 



JESUS THE KESUPvBECTION AND THE LIFE. 451 

his own decease was clearly before his eye. His sayings and doings 
at Bethabara show with what deep interest he himself looked for- 
ward to the issue. If we cannot with certainty say that no miracle 
he ever wrought occupied beforehand so much of our Saviour's 
thoughts, we can say that no other miracle was predicted and pre- 
pared for as this one was. 

"Lazarus is dead nevertheless let us go unto him." Had 

the disciples but remembered their Master's first words, to which the 
key had now been put into their hands, they might at once have 
gathered what the object of that journey was in which Jesus invited 
them to accompany him, and the thought of it might have banished 
other fancies and other fears. But slow to realize the glory of the 
coming and predicted miracle, or quick to connect it with the after- 
risk and danger, they hesitate. One there is among them as slow in 
faith as the slowest — fuller, perhaps, than any of them of mistrust — 
yet quick and fervid in his love, seeing nothing but death before 
Jesus if once he shows himself at Jerusalem — who says unto his fel- 
low-disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him:" the ex- 
pression of a gloomy and somewhat obstinate despondency, sinking 
into despair, yet at the same time of heroic and chivalrous attach- 
ment. Jesus says nothing to the utterer of this speech. He waits 
for other and after occasions to take Thomas into his hands, and turn 
his incredulity into warm and living faith. 

The group journeys on to Bethany, and at last comes near the 
village. Some one has witnessed its approach, and goes with the 
tidings to where the mourning sisters and those who have to comfort 
them are sitting. It may have been into Martha's ear that the tid- 
ings are first whispered — Mary beside her, too overwhelmed with 
grief to hear. As soon as she hears that Jesus is coming, Martha 
rises and goes out to meet him. Mary, whether she hears or not, 
sees her sister rise and go, yet stays still in the house — the two sis- 
ters, the one in her eager movement, the other in her quiet rest, here 
as elsewhere showing forth the difference of their characters. Mar- 
tha is soon in the Saviour's presence. The sight of Jesus fills her 
heart with strange and conflicting emotions. In his kind look she 
reads the same affectionate regard he had ever shown. "Yet had he 
not delayed coming to them in their hour of greatest need? She 
will bbt reproach, for her confidence is still unbroken. Yet she can- 
not help feeling what looked liked forgetfulness or neglect. Above 
all such personal feelings the thought of her dead brother rises. She 
thinks of the strange words the messenger had reported. She knows 
not well what they could have meant, to what they could have point- 



452 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

ed ; but tiie hope still lingers in her heart, that now that he at last 
is here, the love and power of Jesus may find some way of manifest- 
ing themselves — perhaps even in recalling Lazarus from the dead 
And in the tumult of these mixed feelings — in the agitation of regret 
and confidence, and grief and hope — she breaks out in the simple but 
pathetic utterance, " Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had 
not died " — ' it is what Mary and I have been saying to ourselves and 
to one another, over and over again, ever since that sad and sorrow- 
ful hour. If only thou hadst been here ! I do not blame you for 
not being here. I do not know what can have kept you from com- 
ing. I will not doubt or distrust your love — but if thou hadst been 
here my brother had not died— you could, you would have kept him 
from dying — you could, you would have raised him up, and given 
him back to us in health. Nay, " I know that even now whatsoever 
thou wii-t ask of God, God will give it thee." ' 

The reply of Jesus seems almost to have been framed for the very 
purpose of checking the hope that was obviously rising in Martha's 
breast. " Thy brother," he says, "shall rise again" — words not in- 
deed absolutely precluding the possibility of a present restoration of 
her brother to life, but naturally directing her thoughts away from 
such a restoration to the general resurrection of the dead. Such at 
least is their effect upon Martha, as is evident from her reply, " 1 
knew that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day" — 
a reply which, though it proved the firmness of her faith in the future 
and general resurrection of the dead, indicated something like disap- 
pointment at what Jesus said. But our Lord's great object in enter- 
ing into this conversation had now been gained. Instead of fostering 
the expectation of immediate relief, he had drawn Martha's thoughts 
off for a time from the present, and fixed them upon the distant 
future of the invisible and eternal world. Having created thus the 
fit opportunity—here on the eve of performing the greatest of his 
miracles — here in converse with one of sincere but imperfect faith, 
plunged in grief, and seeking only the recovery of a lost brother, 
Jesus says, " I- am the resurrection and the life ; he that believeth on 
me, though he were dead, yet shall he live ; and whosoever lively, and 
believeth on me shall never die " — as if he had said, 'Martha, Martha 
thou wert troubled once when I was in your dwelling with the pett\ 
cares of your household, but now a heavier trouble has come upon 
your heart. You mourn a brother's death, but would that even now 
1 could raise your thoughts above the consideration of the life, the 
death, the resurrection of the perishable body, to the infinitely more 
momentous one of the life and the death of the indwelling, the im« 



J 



JESUS THE EESUEKEOTION AND THE LIFE. 453 

mortal soul ! You are looking to me with a lingering hope that I 
might find some way to assuage your present grief by giving bach to 
you the brother that lies buried. You believe so far in me as to have 
the confidence that whatever I asked of God, God would give it me. 
Would that I could get you and. all to look to me in another and far 
higher character than the assuager of human sorrow, the bringer of 
a present relief ; that I could fix your faith upon, me as the Prince of 
life, the author, the bestower, the originator, the supporter, the ma- 
turer of that eternal life within the soul over which death hath so 
little dominion — that whosoever once hath this life begun, in dying 
3till lives, and in living can never die.' For let us notice, as helping 
us to a true comprehension of these wonderful words of our Kedeemer, 
that immediately after their utterance, he addressed to Martha the 
pointed question, "Believest thou this '?" It was not unusual for our 
Lord to ask some profession of faith in his power to help from those 
on wham or for whom that power was about to be exerted. He did 
not need to ask any such profession from Martha. She had already 
declared her full assurance that he had the power of Deity at com- 
mand. The very manner in which the question was put to Martha, 
"Believest thou this?" plainly intimates that some weighty truth lay 
wrapped up in the words just uttered beyond any to which she had 
already assented. Had there been nothing in what Christ now said 
beyond what Martha had previously- believed — to which he had 
already testified — such an interrogation would have been without a 
meaning. It cannot be a mere proclamation of the immortality of 
the soul and the resurrection of the body, and of Christ's connection 
with them, either as their human announcer or their Divine author, 
that is here made. No such interpretation would explain or justify 
the language here employed. The primary and general assertion, " I 
am the resurrection and the life," gets its only true significance assign- 
ed to it by the two explanatory statements with which it was followed 
up. "I am the life," said Jesus, not in any general sense as being 
the great originator and sustainer of the soul's existence, but in this 
peculiar and specific sense, that "whosoever liveth and believeth on 
me" — or rather, liveth by believing on me — "shall never die." And 
"I am the resurrection" in this sense, that "whosoever believeth on 
me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." 

Such language connects, in some peculiar way, the life and 
.resurrection that Jesus is now speaking of with believing on him ; it 
at least implies that he has some other and closer connection with 
the life and the resurrection of men who believe than he has with 
those of men who believe not. Jesus, in fact, is here, in these mem- 



454 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

orable words, only proclaiming to Martha, and through her to the 
world of sinners he came to save, what the great end of his mission 
is, and how it is that that end is accomplished. Sin entered into this 
world, and death — not the dissolution of the body, but spiritual 
death — this death by sin. "In the day thou eatest thereof thou 
shalt die." And the death came with the first transgression. The 
pulse of the true spiritual life, of life in God and to God, ceased its 
beatings. Death reigned in all its coldness; the warmth of a per- 
vading love to God had gone, and the chill of a pervading fear seized 
upon the soul. Death reigned in all its silence, for the voice of cease- 
less prayer and praise was hushed. It rained in all its torpid inac- 
tivity, for no longer was there a continued putting forth of the entire 
energies of the spirit in the service of its Maker. And the same 
death that came upon the first transgressor has passed upon all men, 
for that all have sinned. And if to be under condemnation be death, 
if to be carnally-minded be death ; if amid all the variety of motives by 
which we naturally are influenced, there be, but at lengthened inter- 
vals, a weak and partial regard to that Great Being whom no creature 
can altogether banish from his thoughts, then surely the Scriptures 
err not in the representation that it was into a world of the dead that 
Jesus came. He came to be the quickener of the dead ; having life 
in himself, to give of this life to all who came to him for it. " The 
life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show 
unto you that eternal life which was with the Father, and was mani- 
fested unto us." " In this was manifested the love of God toward us, 
because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we 
might live through him." " And we know that the Son of God is 
come. This is the true God and eternal life." "And this is the rec- 
ord that God hath given unto us eternal life, and this life is in his 
Son. He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of 
God hath not life. These things have I written unto you that believe 
on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eter- 
nal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God." 

Such are the testimonies borne by a single apostle in one short 
epistle (1st Epistle of John). More striking than any other words 
upon this subject are those of our Lord himself. Take up the gos- 
pel of St John, the special record of those discourses of our Lord in 
which he most fully unfolded himself, telling who he was, and what 
he came to this earth to do, and you will not find one of them in 
which the central idea of life coming to the dead through him is not 
presented. Thus, in the conversation with Nicodemus on the occa- 
sion of his first Passover, you hear him say : "As Moses lifted up the 



.iESUS THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE 455 

serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up . 
that whosoever belie veth in him should not perish, but have eternal 
life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life." John 3:14-16. Thus, also, in his conversation 
with the woman of Samaria : "If thou knewest the gift of God, and 
who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have 
asked of him, and he would have given thee living" (life-giving) 
"water. Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but 
whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never 
thirst ; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of 
water springing up into everlasting life." John 4:10-14. Thus, also, 
in his next discourse at Jerusalem, on the occasion of his second 
Passover : " For as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth 
them ; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. Verily, verily, I 
say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth on him that 
seni me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation ; 
but is passed from death unto life. Ye will not come unto me that 
ye might have life." John 5:21, 24, 40. Thus, also, in the great, 
discourse delivered after the feeding of the five thousand : " This is 
the Father's will which hath sent me, that every one which seeth the 
Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life : and I will raise 
him up at the last day. I am that bread of life. This is the bread 
which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and 
not die. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever : and the 
bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of 
the world. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of 
the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. He that 
eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in 
him." John 6 : 39, 40, 48, 50, 51, 53, 56. Thus, also, at the Feast of 
Tabernacles : "lam the light of the world : he that followeth me shall 
not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. Verily, verily, 
I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death." 
John 8:12, 51. Thus, also, at the Feast of Dedication : "My sheep 
hear my voice, and they follow me, and I give unto them eternal life ; 
and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of 
my hand." John 10 :27, 28. And so also on the eve of his last and 
greatest miracle : " I am the resurrection and the life : he that believ- 
eth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live ; and whosoever 
iiveth and believeth in me shall never die." Is there nothing strik 
ing in it that, from first to last, running through all these diseouisr* 
of our Saviour — to be found in every one of them without a single 



156 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

exception— -this should be held out to us by our Lord himself as the 
great end and object of his lifo and death — that we, who were all 
dead in trespasses and sins, alienated from the life of God, should 
6nd for these dead souls of ours a higher and everlasting life m 
him? 

The life of the soul lies, first, in the enjoyment of God's favor- - in 
the light of his reconciled countenance shining upon it, in the ever- 
lasting arms of his love and power embracing it. The great obstacle 
to our entrance upon this life is conscious guilt, the sense of having 
forfeited the favor, incurred the wrath of God. This obstacle Christ 
has taken out of the way by dying for us, by bearing our sins in his 
own body on the tree. There is redemption for us through his blood, 
even the forgiveness of our sins. Not that the cross is a talisman 
which works with a hidden, mystic, unknown, unfelt power — not that 
the blood of the great sacrifice is one that cleanseth past guilt away, 
leaving the old corruption untouched and unsubdued. Jesus is the 
life in a farther and far higher sense than the opener of a free 
way of access to God through the rent veil of his flesh. He is the 
perennial source of that new life within, which consists in communion 
with Gcd, likeness to God, in gratitude, in love, in peace, and joy, 
and hope — in trusting, serving, submitting, enduring. This life hangs 
ever and wholly upon him ; all good and gracious affections, every 
pure and holy impulse, the desire and ability to be, to do, to suffer — 
coming to us from him to whose light we bring our darkness, to 
whose strength we bring our weakness, to whose sympathy our sor- 
row, to whose fulness our emptiness. Our natural life, derived origi- 
nally from another, is for a season dependent on its source, but that 
dependence weakens and at last expires. The infant hangs helplessly 
upon its mother at the first. But the infant grows into the child, 
the child into the man — the two lives separate. Not such our spirit- 
ual life. Coming to us at first from Christ, it comes equally and 
entirely from him ever afterwards. It grows, but never away from 
him. It gets firmer, more matured; but its greater firmness and 
maturity it owes to closer contact with him — simpler and more entire 
dependence on him, deeper and holier love to him. It is as the 
branch is in the vine, having no life when parted from it ; and as a 
child is in its parent, that believers are in Christ. There is but one 
relationship, of Son to Father — one wholly unique — which fitly repre- 
sents this union, which was employed by Christ himself to do so, 
"That they all maybe one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, 
that they also may be one in us. I in them and thou in me, that they 
may be made perfect in one." It is indeed but the infancy of that 



THE EAISING OF LAZARUS. 457 

life which lies in such oneness with the Son and the Father, that is 
to be witnessed here on earth. Yet within that feeble infancy are 
the germinating seeds of an endless, an ever-progressive, an inde- 
structible existence, raised by its very nature above the dominion of 
death ; bound by ties indissoluble to him who was dead and is alive 
again, and liveth for evermore ; an existence destined to run on its 
everlasting course, getting ever nearer and nearer, growing ever liker 
and liker to him from whom it flows. 

Amid the death-like torpor which hath fallen upon us, stripping 
us of the desire and power to live wholly in God and wholly for God, 
who would not wish to feel the quickening touch of the great life- 
giver, Jesus Christ — to be raised to newness of life in him — to have 
our life bound up with his for ever — hid with him in God ? This — 
nothing less than this, nothing lower than this — is set before us. 
Who would not wish to see and feel it realized in his present, his 
future, his eternal existence ? Then, let us cleave to Christ, resolved 
in him to live, desiring in him to die, that with him we may be raised 
at last, at the resurrection, on the great day, to those heavenly places 
where, free from all weakness, vicissitude, corruption, and decay, this 
life shall be expanded and matured throughout the bright ages of an 
unshadowed eternity. 



XIV. 

The Raising of Lazarus.* 

It is not likely that Martha understood in its full meaning what 
Christ had said about his being the Resurrection and the Life. So 
far, however, as she did comprehend, she believed ; and so when Jesus 
said to her, "Believest thou this?" — understanding that he had 
spoken about himself, and wished from her some expression of her 
faith — she said to him, "Yea, I believe that thou art the Christ, the 
Son of God, which should come into the world." With crude ideas 
of the character and offices they attributed to him, many were ready 
to call Jesus the Christ, to believe that he was the Messias spoken of 
by the prophets. Martha's confession went much farther than this: 
she believed him to be also the Son of God, to be that for claiming 
to be which the Jews had been ready to stone him, as one making 
himself equal with God. It may have been, regarding him too much 

» John 11 : 27-54. 



158 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

as a mere man Laving power with God, that she had previously said, 
"But I know that even now whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God 
will give it thee;" but now that her thoughts are concentrated upon 
it, she tells out all the faith that is in her, and in so doing ranks 
herself beside Peter and the very few who at that time could have 
joined in the confession, "I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son 
of the living God." 

Had Mary and Lazarus not been in his thoughts Jesus might have 
pronounced over Martha the same benediction that he did over Peter, 
and said to her, "Blessed art thou, Martha, for flesh and blood hatli 
not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven." As it 
is, he simply accepts the good confession, and bids Martha go and 
call her sister. 

Mary had not heard at first of the Lord's coming, or, if she had, 
was too absorbed in her sorrow to heed it. But now when Martha 
whispers in her ear, "The Master is come and calleth for thee," she 
rises and hastens out to where Jesus is, outside the village. No one 
had followed Martha when she went out there. But there was such 
an unusual quickness, such a fresh and eager excitement in this move- 
ment of Mary, that those around her ran with her and followed, say- 
ing, " She goeth unto the grave to weep there." Thus did she draw 
along with her the large company that was to witness the great 
miracle. 

Once again in the Master's presence, Mary is overwhelmed with 
emotion. She falls weeping at his feet; has nothing to say as she 
looks up at him through her tears but what Martha had said before : 
"Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died." Her 
grief checks all further utterance. Nor has Jesus any thing to say. 
Mary is weeping at his feet, Martha is weeping at his side, the Jews 
are weeping all around. This is what death had done, desolating a 
once happy home, rending with such bitter grief the two sisters' 
hearts, melting into kindred sorrow the hearts of friends and neigh- 
bors. The calm that had its natural home in the breast of the Re- 
deemer is broken up: he grieves in spirit and is troubled. Too 
heavy in heart himself, too troubled in spirit, as he stands with 
hearts breaking and tears falling all around him, to have any 
words of counsel or comfort for Mary such as he addressed to 
Martha, he can only say, " Where have ye laid him ?" They say 
to him, "Lord, come and see." He can restrain no longer. He 
wept. 

What shall we think or say of these tears of Jesus ? There were 
some among those who saw him shed them, who, looking at them in 



THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 459 

their first and simplest aspect — as tears shed over the grave of a 
departed friend — said one to another, "Behold how he loved him!" 
There were others not sharing so much in the sisters' grief, who were 
at leisure to say, "Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the 
blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?" 'P 
he could have saved him, why did he not do it? He may weep now 
himself: had it not been better that he had saved these two poor 
sisters from weeping?' We take our station beside these men. With 
the first we say, Behold how he pities ! See in the tears he sheds 
what a singular sympathy with human sorrow there is within his 
heart — a sympathy deeper and purer than we have ever elsewhere 
seen expressed. To w r eep with others or for others is no unusual 
thing, and carries with it no evidence of extraordinary tenderness of 
spirit. It is what at some time or other of their lives all men have 
done. But there is a peculiarity in the tears of Jesus that separates 
them from all others — that gives them a new meaning and a new 
power. For where is Jesus when he weeps? a few paces from 
the tomb of Lazarus; and what is he about immediately to do? 
to raise the dead man from the grave, and give him back to his 
sisters. Only imagine that, gifted with such a power, you had gone 
on such an errand, and stood on the very edge of its execution, would 
not your whole soul be occupied with the great thing you were about 
to do, the great joy you were about to cause ? You might see the 
sisters of the dead one weeping, but, knowing how very soon you 
were about to turn their grief into gladness, the sight would ouly 
hasten you forward on your way. But though knowing what a per- 
fect balm he was so soon to lay upon all the sorrow, Jesus shows 
himself so sensitive to the simple touch of grief, that even in such 
peculiar circumstances he cannot see others weeping without weep- 
ing along with them. How exquisitely tender the sympathy man- 
ifested in the tears that in such peculiar circumstances were shed ! 

Again we take our station beside the onlookers, and to the second 
set of speakers we would say — he could have caused that this man 
had not died. But his are no false tears, though shed over a calam- 
ity he could have prevented. He allowed Lazarus to die, he allowed 
his sisters to suffer all this woe, not that he loved them less, but 
because he knew that for him, for them, for others, for us all, highei 
ends were in this way gained than could have been accomplished bj 
his cutting the illness short, and going from Bethabara to cur.-. 
Little did the weeping sisters know what a place in the annals of 
redemption the death and resurrection of their brother was to 
occupy. How earnestly in the course of the illness did they pray 



460 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

for his recovery ! How eagerly did they despatch thpir messenger tc 
Jesus! A single beam of light fell on the darkness when the mes- 
senger brought back as answer the words he had heard Jesus utter — 
" This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the 
Son of God might be glorified thereby." What other meaning could 
they put upon the words, but that either their brother was to recover, 
or Jesus was to interfere and heal him ? Their brother died, and all 
the more bitterly because of their disappointment did they bemoaD 
his loss. But what thought they when they got him back again— 
what thought they when they heard of Christ's own death and resur- 
rection — what thought they when they came to know, as they had 
never known before, that Jesus was indeed the abolisher of death, 
the bringer of life and immortality to light? Would they then have 
wished that their brother had not died — that they had been saved 
their tears, but lost the hallowed resurrection-birth of their brother 
to his Lord, lost to memory the chiefest treasure that time gave to 
carry with them into eternity ? 

Groaning again in spirit, Jesus came to the grave. It was a cave, 
and a stone covered the niche within which the body of the dead 
was lying. Jesus said, "Take ye away the stone." The doing so 
would at once expose the dead, and let loose the foul effluvium of the 
advanced decomposition. The careful Martha, whose active spirit 
ever busied itself with the outward and tangible side of things, at 
once perceives this, and hastens to interpose a check. Gently, but 
chidingly, the Lord said unto her, " Said I not unto thee, that, if thou 
wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?" 'Was it 
not told thee in the words brought back by thy messenger that this 
sickness was to be for the glory of God — a glory waiting yet to be 
revealed? Have I not been trying to awaken thy faith in myself, as 
the resurrection and the life? Why think, then, of the existing state 
of thy brother's body ? Why not let faith anticipate the future, and 
put all such lower thoughts and cares away ? ' The rebuke was gently 
given ; but given at such a time, and in such presence, it must have 
fallen heavily upon poor Martha's heart. 

And now the order is obeyed. Taking a hasty glance within, the 
removers of the stone withdraw. Jesus stands before the open sepul- 
chre. But all is not ready yet. There is to be a slowness, a solem- 
nity in every step that shall wind up every spirit to the topmost point 
of expectation. Jesus lifts his eyes to heaven and prays, not to ask 
God to work the miracle, or give him power to do so. So might 
Moses, or Elijah, or any other of the great miracle-workers of earlier 
times have done, proclaiming thereby in whose name it was and bj 



THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 401 

svLose power they wrought. Jesus never did so. He stands alone 
in this respect. All that he did was done indeed in conjunction with 
the Father. He was careful to declare that the Son did nothing of 
himself, nothing independently. It was in faith, with prayer, that al! 
his mighty works were wrought ; but the faith was as peculiar as th<* 
prayer — both such as he alone could cherish and present. Ordina 
illy the faith was hidden in his heart, the prayer was in secret, unntr 
fcered and unheard. But now he would have it known how close was 
the union between him and the Father. He would turn the ap- 
proaching miracle into an open and incontrovertible evidence that he 
was the Sent of the Father, the Son of God. And so, in words of 
thanksgiving rather than of petition, he says, " Father, I thank thee 
that thou hast heard me" — the silent prayer had already been heard 
and answered — "And I knew that thou hearest me always," 'that thy 
hearing is not peculiar to this case, for as I am always praying, so 
thou art always answering' — "but because of the people which stand 
by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me," lit no 
more solemn manner could the fact of his mission from tho Father, 
and of the full consent and continued cooperation of the Father with 
him in all he said and did, be suspended upon the issue of the words 
that next come from his lips: "And when he thus had spoken, he 
cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth." The hour has come 
for the dead to hear and live. At once, and at that summons, the 
body lives, starts into life again, not as it had died, the life injected 
into a worn and haggard frame. It gets back in a moment all its 
healthful vigor. At once, too, and at that summons, from a dream- 
less sleep that left it nothing to tell about the four days' interval, or 
from a region the secrets of which it was not permitted to disclose, 
the spirit returns to its former habitation. Lazarus rises and stands 
erect. But he is bound hand and foot, a napkin is over his face and 
across his eyes. So bound, as good as blind, he could take but a few 
timid shuffling steps in advance. "Loose him," said Jesus, "and let 
him go." They do it. He can see now all around. He can go 
where he pleases. Shall we doubt that the first use he makes of 
sight and liberty is to go and cast himself at the Redeemer's feet? 

" Take ye away the stone," "Loose him, and let him go." Christ 
could easily by the word of his great power have removed the stone, 
untied the bandages. But he does not do so. There is to be no idle 
expenditure of the Divine energy. What human hands are fit for, 
human hands must do. The earthly and the heavenly, as in all 
Christ's workings, blend harmoniously together. So is it still in 
that spiritual world in which he still is working the wonders of his 



462 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

grace, raising dead souls to life, and nourishing the life that is so 
begotten. 

It is not for us to quicken the spiritually dead. No human voice 
has power to pierce the closed ear, to reach the dull, cold heart. 
The voice of Jesus can alone do that. But there are stones of 
obstruction which keep that voice from being heard. These we can 
remove. The ignorant can be taught, the name of Jesus be made 
Iraown, the glad tidings of salvation published abroad. And when at 
the divine call the new life has entered into the soul, by how many 
bonds and ligaments, prejudices of the understanding, old holds of 
the affections, old habits of the life, is it hampered and hindered! 
These, as cramping our own or others' higher life, we may help to 
untie and fling away. 

But the crowning lesson of the great miracle is the mingled exhi- 
bition that it makes of the humanity and divinity of our Lord. No- 
where, at no time in all his life, did he appear more perfectly human, 
show himself more openly or fully to be one with us, our true and 
tender elder brother, than when he burst into tears before the grave 
of Lazarus. Nowhere, at no time, did he appear more divine than 
when with the loud voice he cried, "Lazarus, come forth," and at the 
voice the^dead arose and came forth. And it is just because there 
meet in him the richness and the tenderness of an altogether human 
pity and the fulness of a divine power, that he so exactly and so com- 
pletely satisfies the deepest inward cravings of the human heart. In 
our sins, in our sorrows, in our weaknesses, in our doubts, in om 
fears, we need sympathy of others who have passed through the same 
experience. We crave it. When we get it we bless the giver, for in 
truth it does more than all things else. But there are many barriers 
in the way of our obtaining it, and there are many limits which con- 
fine it when it is obtained. Many do not know us. They are so dif- 
ferently constituted, that what troubles us does not trouble them. 
They look upon all our inward straggles and vexations as needless 
and self-imposed, so that just in proportion to the speciality of our 
trial is the narrowness of the circle from which we can look for any 
true sympathy. But even were we to find the one in all the earth by 
nature most qualified to enter into our feelings, how many are the 
chances that we should find his sympathy preoccupied, to the full 
engaged, without time or without patience to make himself so master 
of all the circumstances of our lot, and all the windings of our 
thoughts and our affections, as to enable him to feel with us and for 
as, as he even might have done! But that which we may search the 
Tvorld for without finding is ours in Jesus Christ. All impedimenta 



THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 46S 

romoved, all limitations lifted off — how true, how tender, how con- 
stant, how abiding is his brotherly sympathy — the sympathy of one 
who knows our frame, who remembers we are dust, of one who knows 
all about, all within us, and who is touched with a fellow-feeling of 
our infirmities, "having himself been tempted in all things like as we 
are." It is not simply the pity of God, with all its fulness and ten- 
derness : that had not come so close to us, taken such a hold of ua 
it is the sympathy of a brother-man that Jesus extends to us, free 
from all the restrictions to which such sympathy is ordinarily sub- 
jected. 

But we need more than that sympathy ; we need succor. Besides 
the heart tender enough to pity, we need the hand strong enough to 
help, to save us. We not only want one to be with us and feel with 
us in our hours of simple sorrow, we want one to be with us and aid 
us in our hours of temptation and conflict, weakness and defeat — one 
not only to be ever at our side at all times and seasons of this our 
earthly pilgrimage, but to be near us then, to uphold us then, when 
flesh and heart shall faint and fail ; to be the strength of our hearts 
then, and afterwards our portion for ever. In all the universe there 
is but one such. Therefore to him, our own loving, compassionate, 
Almighty Saviour, let us cling, that softly in the bosom of his gentle 
pity we may repose, and safely, by his everlasting arms, may for ever 
be sustained. 

Let us now resume the narrative. The raising of Lazarus was 
too conspicuous a miracle, it had been wrought too near the city, 
had been seen by too many witnesses, and had produced too palpable 
results, not to attract the immediate and fixed attention of the Jewish 
rulers. Within a few hours after its performance Jerusalem would 
be filled with the report of its performance. A meeting of the San- 
hedrim was immediately summoned, and sat in council as to what 
should be done. No doubt was raised as to the reality of this or any 
of the other miracles which Christ had wrought. They had been 
done too openly to admit of that. But now, when many even of the 
Jews of Jerusalem were believing in him, some stringent measures 
must be taken to check this rising, swelling tide, or who could tell to 
what it may carry them? There were divisions, however, in the 
council. It was constituted of Pharisees and Sadducees, who had 
been looking at Jesus all through with very different eyes. The 
Pharisees, from the first, had hated him. He had made so little of 
all their boasted righteousness, had exalted goodness and holiness of 
heart and life so far above all ritualistic regularity, had simplified 
religion so, and encouraged men, however sinful, to go directly to 



464 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

God as their merciful Father, setting aside the pretensions of the 
priesthood, and treating as things of little worth the labored theology 
and learning of the schools, he had been so unsparing besides iE 
exposing the avarice, the ambition, the sensuality that cloaked them • 
selves in the garb of a precise and exclusive and fastidious religion- 
ism, that they early felt that their quarrel with him was not to be 
settled otherwise than by his death. Very early, on the occasion of 
his second visit to Jerusalem, they had sought to slay him, at first 
nominally as a Sabbath-breaker, then afterwards, and still more, as a 
blasphemer.* In Galilee — to which he had retired to put himself 
out of the reach of the Pharisees of the capital — their hostility pur- 
sued him, till we read of the Pharisees and the Herodians then tak- 
ing counsel together "how they might destroy him."f Once and 
again, at the Feast of Tabernacles, and at the Feast of Dedication, 
stones had been taken up to stone him to death, officers had been 
sent to arrest him, and the resolution taken and announced, that 
that if any man should confess that he was the Christ, he should be 
excommunicated. But as yet no formal determination of the Sanhe- 
drim had been made that he should be put to death. The reason for 
this delay, for suffering Christ to go at large even for so long a time 
as he did, was in all likelihood the dominance in the Sanhedrim of 
the Sadducean element. The Sadducees had their own grounds for 
disliking the person, the character, the teaching, the pretensions oi 
Jesus, but they were not so vehement or so virulent in their persecu- 
tion of him. Caring less about religious dogmas and observances 
than the rival sect, they might have been readier to tolerate him as 
an excited enthusiast; but now they also got frightened, for they 
were the great supporters of the Eoman power, and the great fearers 
of popular revolt. And so when this meeting of the Great Council 
was called in haste, Pharisees and Sadducees found common ground 
in saying to one another, "What do we? for this man does many 
miracles. If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him ; and 
the Eomans shall come and take away both our place and nation," 
Neither party believed that there was any chance of Jesus making a 
successful revolt, and achieving by that success a liberation from the 
Roman yoke, as it then lay upon them. The Pharisees, the secret 
enemies of the foreigner, saw nothing in Jesus of such a warlike 
leader as the nation longed for and required. The Sadducees, dread- 
ing some outbreak, but utterly faithless as to any good issue coming 
out of it, saw nothing before them as the result of such a movement 
but the loss of such power as they were still permitted to exercise 
* John 5 : 16-18 -f Mark 3 : 6. 



THE KAISING OF LAZAKUS. 465 

And so both combined against the Lord. But there was some loose 
talking, some doubts were expressed bj men like Nicodemus, or 
some feebler measures spoken of, till the high priest himself arose - 
Caiaphas, the son-in-law of Annas, connected thus with that family in 
which the Jewish pontificate remained for fifty years — four of the 
sons, as well as the son-in-law of Annas, having, with some inter- 
ruptions, enjoyed this dignity. All through this period, embracing 
the whole of Christ's life from early childhood, Annas, the head of 
this favored family, even when himself out of office, retained much of 
its power, being consulted on all occasions of importance, and acting 
as the president of the Sanhedrim. Hence it is that in the closing 
scenes of our Lord's history Annas and Caiaphas appear as acting 
conjunctly, each spoken of as high priest. Caiaphas, like the rest 
of his family, like all the aristocracy of the temple, was a Sadducee ; 
and the spirit both of the family and the sect was that of haughty 
pride and a bold and reckless cruelty. Caiaphas cut the deliberations 
short by saying impetuously and authoritatively to his colleagues, 
" Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is expedient for us that 
one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish 
not." One life, the life of this Galilean, what is it worth? What 
matters it, whether he be innocent or guilty, according to this or that 
man's estimate of guilt or innocence; it stands in the way of the 
national welfare. Better one man perish than that a whole nation 
be involved in danger, it may be in ruin. The false, the hollow, the 
unjust plea, upon which the life of many a good and innocent man, 
guilty of nothing but speaking the plain and honest truth, has been 
sacrificed, had all the sound, as coming from the lips of the high 
priest, of a wise policy, a consultation for the nation's good. Pleased 
with themselves as such good patriots, and covering with this disguise 
all the other grounds and reasons for the resolution, it was deter- 
mined that Jesus should be put to death. It remained only to see 
how most speedily and most safely it could be accomplished. 

Unwittingly, in what he said Caiaphas had uttered a prophecy, 
had announced a great and central truth of the Christian faith. Pie 
had given to the death determined on too limited a range, as if it 
had been for that nation of the Jews alone that Jesus was to die. 
But the Evangelist takes up, expounds, and expands his words as 
carrying with them the broad significance that not for that natioa 
only was he to die, but that by his death he " should gather together 
in one the children of God that were scattered abroad." Strange 
ordering of Providence, that here at the beginning and there at the 
close of our Lord's passion — here in the Sanhedrim, there upon the 

Life of Clnltt 30 



4(56 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

cross — here from the Jewish high priest, there from the Roniai: 
governor — words should come by which the unconscious utterera 
conspired in proclaiming the priestly and the kingly authority »nd 
office of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ! 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 



That Jesus might have time to complete his work, he went from 
the vicinity of Jerusalem to a place called Ephraim, in the northeast 
part of Judea, where he remained for a few weeks in retirement. When 
the Passover drew near he traveled northward by a circuitous route, 
then eastward along the border of Samaria and Galilee, and crossed the 
Jordan into Peraea. From this point began our Lord's final journey 
to Jerusalem. At a certain village ten lepers were healed. The par- 
ables of the Unjust Judge and of the Pharisee and the Publican were 
spoken. A decisive answer to questions about divorce was given. 
Then mothers brought their children to Christ and he blessed them. 
Christ was next visited by the young man who had large possessions, 
but would not part from them that he might win a place in the kingdom 
of heaven. The warning is given against trusting in riches. James 
and John and their mother, Salome, present their request for places 
of honor for the two apostles in the new kingdom which they judge 
is soon to be established. 

Once more crossing the Jordan, Jesus arrives at Jericho, where he 
heals blind Bartimeus, and brings Zaccheus to repentance and reforma- 
tion. 

Proceeding on his way, the Saviour arrives at Bethany, and with 
his disciples is welcomed in the home of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. 
A supper is arranged and Mary uses the occasion to anoint Christ 
with the costly nard, and receives the Lord's approval when her deed 
of love is challenged. Even to some in our day it might appear as if 
the words with which our Lord commends the service of Mary are 
extreme, but her act is only another example of that quality of service 
that moved the heart of Christ in an unwonted degree whenever it 
occurred during his ministry — that abandon of faith seen in the cen- 
turion who came to him at Capernaum; that self-effacing penitence 
and hope with which the sinful woman at the feast knelt at his feet; 
that grandeur of confession with which Peter exclaimed, " Thou art 
the Christ, the Son of the living God." So the anointing by Mary 
is the expression of an absolute love— the very love which Christ came 
to kindle in human hearts — going out to the purity, the beauty, the 
helpfulness, the tenderness, the sacrificial pity, the holiness of the 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 466a 

divine nature as incarnated in his own person. Mary is perhaps the 
first one in whom this love in its completeness of response to the spiritual 
Christ is seen, and as such she becomes a file-leader. A St. Paul, a 
St. John, a Persis, a Phoebe may follow, but Mary of Bethany is the 
forerunner, and of her as such Christ says: " She hath done what she 
could. . . This that she hath done shall be a memorial of her." 



PART III. MAIN MINISTRY IN JUDEA AND PERiEA. 

Study 15. Second Period of Per^ean Ministry and 
Arrival at Bethany. 

(1) Christ's sojourn at Ephraim 4666 

(2) Course into Per.ea 4665 

(3) Cleansing of ten lepers 4666, 467 

a. They call for mercy and help 4666 

6. Christ directs them to go and show themselves to the priests 4666 

c. They find that they are cleansed 467 

d. One, a Samaritan, returns to give thanks 467 

(4) Question as to when the kingdom of God will come 467 

a. Parable of the Unjust Judge 467 

6. Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican 467 

(5) Question as to divorce 467, 468 

a. Moses permitted it because of hardness of heart 467 

6. The higher standard of the new kingdom 467, 468 

(6) Christ and the children 468-470 

a. Mothers bring children to him 468 

6. The disciples rebuke them 468 

c. Jesus receives the children and blesses them 468 

d. States that of such is the kingdom of heaven 468 

e. View as to their salvation 468-470 

(7) Christ and the rich young man 470-475 

a. The man's desire and attitude 470-472 

6. Christ's test and direction 472, 473 

c. The man's failure and sad departure 473 

d. Christ's general statement concerning riches 473-475 

(8) Jericho and Jesus' works 475-4P4 

a. History of the region 475, 470 

6. Jesus' bearing and view of the future 476, 477 

c. Request of James and John 477-479 

d. Healing of blind Bartimeus 479-482 

e. Conversion of Zaccheus 481- J 84 

(9) Journey to and arrival at Bethany 484-486 

a. Parable of the Pounds given 484 

6. Thoughts of the Passover multitudes 485 

c. Jesus in the Bethany home 485, 486 



4666 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

(10) Anointing by Mary 486-491 

a. Supper in the house of Simon the leper 486 

b. Mary anoints Christ 4gg 437 

c. Criticism of her act 487 4gg 

d. Jesus' commendation and prophecy 488-491 



XV. 

The Last Journey through Per^ea (East of the 
Jordan) : The Ten Lepers — The Coming of the 
Kingdom — The Question of Divorce — Little Chil- 
dren BROUGHT TO HlM The YOUNG RuLER * 

Cheist's stay at Bethany on the occasion of his raising Lazarus 
from the dead must have been a very short one. The impression and 
effect of the great miracle was so immediate and so great that no 
time was lost by the rulers in calling together the council and com- 
ing to their decision to put Jesus to death. Hearing of this, no time 
on his part would be lost in putting himself, now only for a short 
time, beyond their reach. He retired in the first instance to a part 
of the country near the northern extremity of the wilderness of Judea, 
into a city called Ephraim, identified by many with the modern town 
of Taiyibeh, which lies a few miles northeast of Bethel. After some 
days of rest in this secluded spot, spent we know not how, the Pass- 
over drew on, and Jesus arose to go up to it. He took a circuitous 
course, passing eastward along the border-line between Galilee and 
Samaria, which lay not more than half a day's journey from Ephraim, 
descending into the valley of the Jordan, crossing the river, entering 
once more into Peraea, travelling through it southward to Jericho. 
It was during this, the last of all his earthly journeys, that as he 
entered into a certain village there met him ten men that were lepers, 
who stood afar off, as the law required ; but not wishing to let him 
pass without a trial made of his grace and power, lifted up theii 
voices, and said, " Jesus, Master, have mercy on us." " Go show 
yourselves unto the priests," was all that Jesus said. He gave this 
order, and passed on. The first thing that the leper who knew or 
believed that the leprosy had departed from him had to do, was to 
submit himself for inspection to the priesthood, that his cure might, 
be authenticated, and he be formally relieved from the restraints 
under which he had been laid. And this is w T hat these ten men are 

* Luke 17 : 11-37, 18 : 15-27 : Matt ^ • ^26 ; Mark 10 : 1-27. 



THE LAST JOURNEY THROUGH PER^EA. 467 

bidden now to do, while as yet no sign of the removal of the disease 
appears. Whether they all had a firm faith from the first that they 
would be cured we may well doubt. Perhaps there was but one 
among them who had such faith. They all, however, obey the order 
that had been given ; it was at least worth trying whether anything 
sould come out of it, and as they went they were all cleansed. The 
moment that the cure was visible, one of them, who was a Samaritan, 
ere he went forward to the priest, went back to Jesus, glorifying God 
with a loud voice, and falling at Christ's feet to give him thanks. 
The other nine went on, had their healing in due course authen- 
ticated, returned to their families and friends, but inquired not for 
their deliverer, nor sought him out to thank him. The contrast was 
one that Christ himself thought fit to notice. " Were there not ten 
cleansed," he said, " but where are the nine ? There are not found 
that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger. And he said 
unto him, Arise, go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole." But 
now once more the Pharisees betake themselves to their congenial 
work, asking him when the kingdom of God should come. He cor- 
rects their errors, gives them solemn warnings as to a coming of the 
Son of Ma»n, in whose issues the men ©f that generation should be 
very disastrously involved, adding the two parables of the Unjust 
Judge and of the Pharisee and the Publican. Once more, however, 
these inveterate enemies return to the assault. At an earlier period 
they had sought in his own conduct, or in that of his disciples, to 
find ground of accusation. Baffled in this, they try now a more 
insidious method, to which we find them having frequent recourse 
towards the close of our Lord's ministry. They demand his opinion 
upon the vexed question of divorce. The two great schools of their 
rabbis differed in their interpretation of the law of Moses upon this 
point. Which side would Jesus take ? Decide as he may, it would 
embroil him in the quarrel. To their surprise he shifted the ground 
of the whole question from the only one upon which they rested it, 
the authority of Moses ; told them in effect that they were wrong in 
thinking that because Moses, or God through Moses, tolerated cer- 
tain practices, that therefore these practices were absolutely right 
and universally and throughout all time to be observed — furnishing 
thereby a key to the Divine legislation for the Israelites, which we 
have been somewhat slow to use as widely as we should ; told them 
that it was because of the hardness of their hearts, to prevent greater 
mischiefs that would have followed a purer and stricter enactment, 
that the Israelites had been permitted to put away their wives, 
(divorce allowed thus, as polygamy had been,) but that from the 



468 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

beginning it had not been so, nor should it be so under the new 
economy that he was ushering in, in which, save in a single case, the 
marriage tie was indissoluble. 

In happy contrast with all such insidious attempts to entangle 
him in his talk was the next incident of his last journey through 
Peraea. They brought little children — infants — to him. It is not 
said precisely who brought them, but can we doubt that it was the 
mothers of the children? They brought their little ones to Jesus 
that he might touch them, put his hands upon them, pray for and 
bless them. Some tinge of superstition there may have been in this, 
some idea of a mystic benefit to be conveyed even to infancy by the 
touch and the blessing of Jesus. But who will not be ready to for- 
give the mothers here, though this were true, as we think of the fond 
regard and deep reverence they cherished towards him? They sec 
him passing through their borders. They hear it is a farewell visit 
he is paying. These little babes of theirs shall never live to see and 
know T how good, how kind, how holy a one he is ; but it would be 
something to tell them of when they grew up, something that they 
might be the better of all their lives afterwards, if he would but 
touch them and pray over them. And so they come, bringing their 
infants m their arms, first telling the disciples what they want. Tc 
them it seems a needless if not impertinent intrusion upon theii 
Master's graver labors. What good can children so young as these 
get from the Great Teacher ? Why foist them upon the notice and 
care of one who has so much weightier things in hand? Without 
consulting then- Master, they rebuke the bringers of the children, and 
would have turned them at once away. Jesus saw it, and he was 
" much displeased." There was more than rudeness and discourtesy 
in the conduct of his disciples. There was ignorance, there was un- 
belief; it was a dealing with infants as if they had no part or share 
as such in his kingdom. The occasion was a happy one — perhaps 
the only one that occurred — for exposing their ignorance, rebuking 
their unbelief, and so, after looking with displeasure at his disciples, 
Jesus said to them, "Suffer the little children to come unto aae, and 
forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." We take the 
last words here in the simplest and most obvious sense, as implying 
that the kingdom of heaven belongs to infants, is in a measure made 
up of them. It is quite true that immediately after having said this 
about the infants Jesus had a cognate word to say to the adults 
around him. He had to tell them that " whosoever should not 
receive the kingdom of God as a little child should not enter therein." 
But that was not said barely and alone as an explanation of his 




'Of Such is the Kingdom of Heaven. 



LITTLE CHILDREN BROUGHT TO HIM. 469 

former speech—was not said to take all meaning out of that speech 
as having any reference to the little children that were then actually 
in his presence. It might be very true, and a very needful thing for 
us to know, that we must be in some sense like to them before we 
can enter into the kingdom; but that did not imply that they must 
become like to us ere they can enter it. If all that Jesus meant had 
been that of suchlike, that is, of those who, in some particular, resemble 
little children, is the kingdom of heaven, we can see much less appro- 
priateness in the rebuke of the disciples, and in the action of the 
Lord which followed immediately upon his use of the expression — 
his taking the little children up into his arms and blessing them. 
We accept, then, the expression as implying not simply that of such- 
like, but of them is the kingdom of heaven. It may be thought that 
a shade of uncertainty still hangs over it. John Newton uses the 
cautious language, "I think it at least highly probable that in those 
words our Lord does not only, if at all, here intimate the necessity of 
our becoming as little children in simplicity, as a qualification with- 
out which (as he expressly declares in other places) we cannot entef 
into his kingdom, but informs us of a fact, that the number of infants 
who are effectually redeemed to God by his blood, so greatly exceeds 
the aggregate of adult believers, that his kingdom may be said to 
consist of little children." It is not necessary, however, while adopt- 
ing generally the interpretation which Newton thought so highly 
probable, to press it so far, or to infer that the kingdom is said to be 
of such because they constitute the majority of its members; enough 
to receive the saying as carrying with it the consoling truth, that 
to infants as such the kingdom of heaven belongeth, so that if in 
infancy they die, into that kingdom they enter. We would be most 
unwilling to regard this gracious utterance of our Lord, and the 
gracious act by which it was followed up, as implying anything less 
than this. 

It is not, however, upon any single saying of our Lord that we 
ground our belief that those who die in infancy are saved; it is upon 
the whole genius, spirit, and object of the great redemption. There 
is indeed a mystery in the death of infants. No sadder nor more 
mysterious sight upon this earth than to see a little unconscious babe 
struggling through the agonies of dissolution, bending upon us those 
strange imploring looks which we long to interpret but cannot, which 
tell only of a suffering we cannot assuage, convey to us petitions for 
help to which we can give no reply. But great as the mystery is 
which wraps itself around the death, still greater would be that 
attending the resurrection of infants if any of them perish. The 



470 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

resurrection is to bring to all an accession of weal or woe. In that 
resurrection infants are to share. Can we believe that, without an 
opportunity given of personally receiving or rejecting Christ, they 
shall be subjected to a greater woe than would have been theirs had 
there been no Kedeemer and no redemption? Then to them his 
coming into the world had been an unmitigated evil. Who can 
believe it to be so? Who will not rather believe, that even as with- 
out sharing in the personal transgression of the first natural head of 
our race, without sinning after the similitude of Adam's transgression, 
they became involved in death; even so, though not believing here — 
the chance not given them — they will share in the benefit of that 
life which the second, the spiritual Head of our race, has brought in 
and dispenses? "Your little ones," said the Lord to ancient Israel, 
speaking of the entrance into the earthly land of promise — "Your 
little ones which ye said should be a prey, and your children which 
in that day had no knowledge between good and evil, they shall go 
in thither." And of that better land into which for us Jesus as the 
forerunner has entered, shall we not believe that our little ones, who 
died before they had any knowledge between good and evil, shall go 
in thither, go to swell the number of the redeemed, go to raise it to 
a vast majority of the entire race, mitigating more than we can well 
reckon the great mystery of the existence here of so much sin, and 
suffering, and death ? 

Setting forth afresh, and now in all likelihood about to pass out 
of that region, there met him one who came running in all eagerness, 
as anxious not to lose the opportunity, and who kneeled to him with 
great reverence as having the most profound respect for him as a 
righteous man, and who said, " Good Master, what good thing shall 
I do, that I may inherit eternal life?" Jesus might at once and 
without any preliminary conversation have laid on him the injunction 
that he did at the last, and this might equally have served the final 
end that the Lord had in view; but then we should have been left in 
ignorance as to what kind of man he was, and how it was that the 
injunction was at once so needful and so appropriate. It is by help 
of the preparatory treatment that we are enabled to see farther than 
•we should otherwise have done into the character of this petitioner 
He was young, he was wealthy, he was a ruler of the Jews. Better 
than this, he was amiable, he was virtuous, had made it from the 
first a high object of ambition to be just and to be generous, to use 
the advantages of his position to win in a right way the favor of his 
fellow-men. But notwithstanding, after all the successful attempts 
of his past life, there was a restlessness, a dissatisfaction in his heart. 






THE YOUNG RULER, 471 

He had not reached the goal. He heard Jesus speak of eternal life, 
something evidently far higher than anything he had yet attained, 
and he wondered how it was to be secured. Nothing doubting but 
that it must be along the same track that he had hitherto been pur- 
suing, but by some extra work of extraordinary merit, he comes to 
Jesus with the question, " Good Master, what good thing shall I do, 
that I may inherit eternal life?" Jesus saw at once that he was put- 
ting all upon moral goodness, some higher virtue to be reached by 
his own effort entitling him to the eternal life. He saw that he was 
so fully possessed with this idea that it regulated even his conception 
of Christ's own personal character, whom he was disposed to look 
upon rather as a preeminently virtuous man than one having any 
peculiar relationship to God. Checking him, therefore, at the very 
first — taking exception to the very form and manner of his address, 
he says, "Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, 
that is, God." 

Endeavoring thus to raise his thoughts to the true source of all 
real goodness, rather than to say anything about his own connection 
with the Father, which it is no part of his present object to speak 
about, Jesus takes him first upon his own ground. There need be 
no talk about any one particularly good thing, that behooved to be 
done, till it w~as seen whether the common acknowledged precepts of 
God's law had been kept. " Thou knowest the commandments, Do 
not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false 
witness, Defraud not, Honor thy father and thy mother." As the 
easiest instrument of conviction, as the one that lay entirely in the 
very region to which all this youth's thoughts and efforts had been 
confined, Jesus restricted himself to quoting the precepts of the 
second table of the law, and says nothing in the meantime about the 
first. The young man, hearing the challenge, listens to the precepts 
as they are detailed, and promptly, without apparently a momentary 
misgiving, he answers, " All these have I observed from my youth." 
There was no doubt great ignorance, great self-deception in this reply. 
He knew but little of any one of these precepts in its true significance, 
in all the strictness, spirituality, and extent of its requirements, who 
coiald venture on any such assertion. Yet there was sincerity in the 
answer, and it pointed to a bygone life of singular external propriety, 
and that the fruit not so much of constraint as of natural amiabieness 
and conscientiousness. As he gave this answer, Jesus beholding 
him loved him. It was new and refreshing to the Saviour's eye to 
see such a specimen as this of truthfulness and purity, of all that 
was morally lovely and of good report among the rulers of the Jews. 



472 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Here was no hypocrite, no fanatic, here was one who had not learned 
to wear the garb of sanctimoniousness as a cover for all kinds of self- 
indulgence ; here was one free from the delusion that the strict 
observance of certain formulas of devotion would staud instead of 
the weightier matters of justice and of charity ; here was one who s<} 
far had escaped the contagion of his age and sect, who was not seek- 
ing to make clean the outside of the cup and the platter, but was 
really striving to keep himself from all that was wrong, and to be 
towards his fellow-men all that, as he understood it, God's law 
required. Jesus looked upon this man and loved him. 

But the very love he bore him prompted Jesus to subject him to 
a treatment bearing in many respects a likeness to that to which he 
subjected Nicodemus. With not a little, indeed, that was different, 
there was much that was alike in the two rulers — the one who came 
to Jesus by night at the beginning of his ministry in Judea ; the one 
who now comes to him by day at the close of his labors in Persea ; 
both honest, earnest men, seekers after truth, and lovers of it in a 
fashion to9, but both ignorant and self-deceived ; Nicodeinus' error 
rather one of the head than of the heart, flowing from an entire mis- 
conception of the very nature of Christ's kingdom ; the young ruler's 
one of the heart rather than of the head, flowing from an inordinate, 
an idolatrous attachment to his worldly possessions. In either case 
Christ's treatment was quick, prompt, decisive, laying the axe at on&e 
at the root of the evil. Beneath all the pleasing show of outward 
moralities Christ detected in the young ruler's breast a lamentable 
want of any true regard to God, any recognition of his supreme and 
paramount claims. His heart, his trust, his treasure, were in earthly, 
not in heavenly things. He needed a sharp lesson to teach him this, 
to lay bare at once the true state of things within. Christ was toe 
kind and too skilful a physician to apply this or that emollient that 
might have power to aHay a symptom or two of the outward irrita- 
tion. At once he thrusts the probe into the very heart of the wound. 
" One thing thou lackest : go thy way," said he, at once assuming his 
proper place as the representative of God and of his claims — " go thy 
way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor ; and come, take 
up the cross, and follow me." The one thing lacking was not the 
renunciation of his property in bestowing it upon the poor. It was a 
supreme devotedness to God, to duty — a willingness to give up any 
tning, to give up every thing where God required it to be given up, 
when the holding of it was inconsistent with fidelity to him. This 
was the one tiling lacking. And instead of proclaiming his fatal defi- 
eiency in this primary requirement, without which there could be no 



THE YOUNG RULER. 473 

true obedience rendered to any part of the Divine law, Christ embod- 
ies the claim which he knew the young ruler was unprepared to honor, 
in that form which struck directly at the idol of his heart, and required 
its instant and absolute dethronement. 

Not for a moment, then, can w T e imagine that in speaking to him 
as he did, Jesus was issuing a general command, or laying down a 
universal condition of the Christian discipleship, or that he was even 
holding up the relinquishment of earthly possessions as an act of pre- 
eminent meritoriousness, which all strivers after Christian perfection 
should set before them as the summit to be reached. There is noth- 
ing of all this here. It is a special treatment of a special case. 
Christ's object being to frame and to apply a decisive touchstone or 
test whereby the conditiou of that one spirit might be exposed, he 
suited with admirable skill the test to the condition. Had that con- 
dition been other than it was, the test employed had been different. 
Had it been the love of pleasure, or the love of power, or the love of 
fame, instead of the love of money that had been the ruling passion, 
he would have framed his order so that obedience to it would have 
demanded the crucifixion of the ruling passion, the renunciation of 
the one cherished idol. The only one abiding universal rule that we 
are entitled to extract from this dealing of our Lord with this appli- 
cant being this : that in coming to Christ, in taking on the yoke of 
the Christian discipleship, it must be in the spirit of an entire readi- 
ness to part with all that he requires us to relinquish, and to allow no 
idol to usurp that inward throne that of right is his. 

Christ's tre-atment, if otherwise it failed, was in one respect emi- 
nently successful. It silenced, it saddened, it sent away. No answer 
was attempted. No new question was raised. The demand was 
made in such broad, unmitigated, unambiguous terms, that the young 
ruler, conscious that he had never felt before the extent or pressure 
of such a demand, and that he was utterly unprepared to meet it, 
turned away disappointed and dissatisfied. Jesus saw him go, let 
him go, followed him with no importunities to return and to recon- 
sider. It was not the manner of the Saviour to be importunate — you 
do not find in him any great urgency or iteration of appeal. When 
once in any case enough is said or done, the individual dealt with is 
left to his own free-will. Gazing after this young ruler as he depart- 
ed, Jesus then looked round about, and said to his disciples, "How 
\.ardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God T 
The disciples were astonished at these words, as well they might be 
What ! was the ease or the difficulty of entering into this kingdom 
to bo measured by the little or by the more of this world's goods that 



474 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

each man possessed ? A strange premium this on poverty, as strange 
a penalty on wealth. Jesus notices the surprise that his saying had 
created, and, aware of the false track along which his disciples' 
thoughts were running, in a way as affectionate as it was instructive 
proceeded to explain the real meaning of what he had just said, 
■Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into 
the kingdom of God !" It is not the having but the trusting that 
creates the difficulty. It is not the kind or the quantity of the 
wealth possessed, but the kind or quantity of the attachment that is 
lavished upon it. The love of the penny may create as great impedi- 
ment as the love of the pound. Nor is it our wealth alone that oper- 
ates in this way, that raises a mighty obstacle in the way of entering 
into the kingdom. It is any thing else than God and Christ upon 
which the supreme affection of the spirit is bestowed. A new light 
dawns upon the disciples' minds as they listen to and begin to com- 
prehend the explanation that their Master now has given, and see 
the extent to which that explanation goes. They were astonished at 
the first, but now the astonishment is more than doubled ; for if it 
indeed be true, that before any individual of our race can cross the 
threshold of the kingdom, such a shift of the whole trust and confi- 
dence of the heart must take place — if every earthly living creature- 
attachment must be subordinated to the love of God and of Jesus 
Christ his Son, who then can be saved ? for who can effect this great 
revolution within his own heart, who can take the dearest idol he has 
known and cast it down in the dust, who can lay hand upon the usur- 
per and eject him, who can raise the rightful owner of it to the throne? 
Astonished out of measure, the disciples say among themselves, " Who 
then can be saved?" Is the question needless or inappropriate ? Now 
is the time, if they have fallen into any mistake, if they are taking too 
dark, too gloomy views of the matter, if there be aught of error or of 
exaggeration in the conceptions out of which this question springs — 
now is the time for Jesus to rectify the error, to remove the miscon- 
ception. Does he do so ? Nay, but assuming that it is even so — as 
difficult to be saved as they imagine — his reply is, " With man it is 
impossible, but not with God, for with God all things are possible." 
Taught then by our Lord himself to know what all true entering into 
his kingdom implies and presupposes, let us be well assured that to be 
saved in his sense of the word is no such easy thing as many fancy, 
fche difficulty not lying in any want of willingness on his part to save 
us— not in any hinder ance whatever lying there without. All such 
outward impediments have been, by his own gracious hand, and by 
the work of his dear Son our Saviour removed. The difficulty lies 



JESUS AT JEEICHO. 475 

within, in our misplaced affections, in our stubborn and obstinate 
wills, in hearts that will not let go their hold of other things to clasp 
him home to them as their only satisfying good. Do you feel the diffi- 
culty.— the moral impossibility of this hinderance being taken away by 
yourselves? Then will you pray to him with wkom this, as e^verj 
thing, is possible, that he may turn the possibility into reality. He 
has done so in the case of multitudes as weak, as impotent as you. 
He will do it unto you if you desire that it be done, and commit the 
doing of it into his hands. 



XYI. 

Jesus at Jericho — The Request of the 3ons of 

Zebedee.* 

No district of the Holy Land is more unlike what it once was and 
what it still might be than that in which Jericho, the city of palms, 
once stood. Its position, commanding the two chief passes up to the 
hill country of Judea and Samaria, the depth and fertility of its well- 
watered soil, and the warmth of its tropical climate, early indicated 
it as the site of a city which should not only be the capital of the 
surrounding territory, but the protection of all western Palestine 
against invaders from the east. Joshua found it so when he crossed 
the Jordan : and as his first step towards the conquest of the country 
which lay beyond, laid siege to a city which had walls broad enough 
to have houses built upon them, and whose spoil when taken, its gold 
and its silver, its vessels of brass and of iron, its goodly Babylonish 
garments, bore evidence of affluence and of traffic. No town in all 
the territory which the Israelites afterwards acquired westward of 
Jordan could compete with Jericho. It fell, was reduced to ruins, 
and the curse of Joshua pronounced upon the man who attempted to 
raise again its walls, t In the days of Aliab that attempt was made, 
and though the threatened evil fell upon the maker, the city rose 

* Matt. 20 :17 34 ; Mark 10 : 2-52 ; Luke 18 : 35-43, 20 : 2-10. 

f Within two miles of it, sharing in all its great natural advantages, stood Gil- 
gal, the first encampment of the Israelites, where the ark stood till its removal to 
Shiloh, which we read of as one of the stations to which Samuel resorted in ad- 
ministering justice throughout the country, where the tribes so often met in the 
days of Saul, to which the men of Judah went down to welcome David back 
again to Jerusalem. 



i7Q THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

from its ruins to enter upon another stage of progressive prosperity, 
which reached its highest point when Herod the Great selected it as 
one of his favorite resorts, beautified it with towers and palaces, be- 
coming so attached to it that, feeling his last illness to have come 
upon him, he retired there to die. Soon after his death the town was 
plundered, and some of its finest buildings were destroyed. These, 
however, were speedily restored to all their original splendor by 
Archelaus, and as he left it Josephus has described it — its stately 
buildings rising up among groves of palm-trees miles in length, with 
gardens scattered round, in which all the chief flowers and fruits of 
eastern lands grew up in the greatest luxuriance. The rarest and 
most precious among them, the balsam, a treasure "worth its own 
weight in silver, for which kings made war,"* "so that he," says 
the Jewish historian, as he warms in his recital of all its glories, "he 
Avho should pronounce the place to be divine would not be mistaken, 
wherein is such plenty of trees produced as is very rare, and of the 
most excellent sort. And, indeed, if we speak of these other fruits, 
it will not be easy to light on any climate in the habitable earth that 
can well be compared to it." And such as Josephus has described 
was Jericho and the country round when Christ's eye rested on them, 
in descending into the valley of the Jordan ; and above the tops of 
the palm-trees, and the roofs of the palaces, he saw the trace of the 
road that led up to Jerusalem. None besides the twelve had gone 
with him into the retreats of Ephraim and Peraea. But now he is on 
the track of the companies from the north, who are going up to the 
Passover, that is to be celebrated at the close of the following week. 
The time, the company, the road, all serve to bring up to the Saviour's 
thoughts events that are now so near, to him of such momentous im- 
port. A spirit of eager impatience to be baptized with the impending 
baptism seizes upon him, and gives a strange quickness and a forward- 
ness to his movements. His talk, his gait, his gestures all betoken 
how absorbed he is ; the eye and thought away from the present, from 
all around, fixed upon some future, the purport of which has wonder- 
fully excited him. His hast}' footsteps carry him on before his fellow- 
travellers. "Jesus went before them," St. Mark tells us, "and they 
were amazed; and as they followed they were afraid." There was 
that in his aspect, attitude, and actions that filled them with wonder 
and with awe. It was not long till an explanation was offered them. 
He took the twelve aside, and once again, as twice before, but now 
with still greater minuteness and particularity of detail, told them 
what was about to happen within a few days at Jerusalem : how he 

* Martineau. 



JESUS AT JERICHO. 477 

waa to be delivered into the hands of the Jewish rulers, and how they 
were to deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles, how he was to be 
mocked and scourged, and spit upon and crucified, till all things that 
were written by the prophets concerning him should be accomplished 
and how on the third he was to rise again. Every thing was told sc 
plainly that we may well wonder that any one could have been at any 
loss as to Christ's meaning ; but the disciples we are told, " under- 
stood none of these things, and the sayings were hid from them, 
neither knew they the thing which was spoken." This only proves 
what a blinding power preconception and misconception have in 
hiding the simplest things told in the simplest language — a blinding 
power often exercised over us now as to the written, as it was then 
exercised over the apostles as to their Master's spoken words. The 
truth is, that these men were utterly unprepared at the time to take 
in the real truth as to what was to happen to their Master. They 
had made up their minds, on the best of evidence, that he was the 
Messiah. He had himself lately confirmed them in that faith. But 
they had their own notions of the Messiahship. With these such suf- 
ferings and such a death as were actually before Jesus were utterly 
inconsistent. They could be but figurative expressions, then, that he 
had employed, intended, perhaps, to represent some severe struggle 
with his adversaries through which he had to pass before his king- 
dom was set up and acknowledged. 

One thing alone was clear — that the time so long looked forward 
to had come at last. This visit to Jerusalem was to witness the erec- 
tion of the kingdom. All other notions lost in that, the thought of 
the particular places they were to occupy in that kingdom entered 
again into the hearts of two of the apostles — that pair of brothers 
who, from early adherence, and the amount of sacrifice they had 
made, and the marked attention that on more than one occasion 
Jesus had paid to them, might naturally enough expect that if special 
favors were to be dispensed to any, they would not be overlooked. 
James and John tell their mother Salome, who has met them by the 
way, all that they have lately noticed in the manner of their Master, 
and all that he has lately spoken, pointing to the approaching pass- 
over as the season when the manifestation of the kingdom was to bo 
made. Mother and sons agree to go to Jesus with the request that 
in his kingdom and glory the one brother should sit upon his right 
hand and the other upon his left, a request that in all likelihood took 
its particular shape and form from what Jesus had said but a few 
days before, when, in answer to Peter's question, "Behold, we have 
forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore '?" And 



478 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Jesus said unto them, "Verily I say unto you, That ye which have fol 
lowed me in the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit in the 
throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the 
twelve tribes of Israel." Matt. 19 : 27, 28. What could these thrones, 
this judging be? Little wonder that the apostles' minds were set 
a speculating by what still leaves us, after all our speculating, about 
as much in the dark as ever. But while Salome and James 
and John were proffering their request, and trying to preengage 
the places of highest honor, where was Peter? It had not come 
into Ms thought to seek a private interview with his Master for 
such a purpose. He had no mother by his side to fan the flame that 
way as ready to kindle in his as in any of their breasts. That with- 
out any thought of one whose natural claims were as good as theirs, 
James and John should have gone to Jesus and made the requesl 
they did, satisfies us at least of this, that it was not the understand- 
ing among the twelve that when the Lord had spoken to Peter as he 
did after his good confession, he had assigned to him the primacy, or 
indeed any particular preeminence, over the rest. 

" Ye know not what ye ask." They did it ignorantly, and so far 
they obtain mercy of the Lord. What it was to be placed on his 
right and on his left in the scenes that awaited him in Jerusalem, two 
nt least of the three petitioners, John and Salome, shall soon know 
as they stand gazing upon the central cross of Calvary. "Can ye 
drink of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism 
that I am baptized with ? They say, We can." From this reply it 
would appear that the disciples understood the Lord as asking them 
whether they are prepared to drink along with him some cup of sor- 
row that was about soon to be put into his hands, to be baptized 
along with him in some baptism of fire to which he was about to be 
subjected. They are prepared, they think that they can follow him, 
they are willing to take their part in whatever suffering such follow- 
ing shall entail. Through all the selfishness, and the ambition, and 
the great ignorance of the future that their request revealed, there 
shone out in this prompt and no doubt perfectly sincere and honest 
reply, a true and deep attachment to their Master, a readiness to 
suffer with him or for him. And he is far quicker to recognize the 
one than to condemn the other. "Ye shall indeed drink of the cup 
that I drink of ; and with the baptism that I am baptized withal shall 
ye be baptized." 'You, James, shall be the first among the twelve 
that shall seal your testimony with your blood. You, John, shall 
have the longest if not the largest experience of what the bearing of 
the cross shall bring w r ith it. But to sit on my right and on my left 



JESUS AT JERICHO. 479 

in my kingdom and my glory, as"k me not for that honor as if it were 
a thing in the conferring of which I am at liberty to consult my own 
individual will or taste or humor. It is not mine so to dispense. It 
is mine to give, but onlj to those for whom it is prepared of my 
Father, and who by the course of discipline through which he shall 
pass them shall be duly prepared for it.' 

James and John have to be content with such reply. Their apj li- 
cation, though made to Christ when alone, soon after became known 
to others, and excites no small stir among them. Which of them 
indeed may cast the first stone at the two ? They had all been quar- 
relling among themselves not long before, as to which of them should 
be greatest. And they shall all ere long be doing so again. Christ's 
word of rebuke as he hears of this contention is for all as well as for 
James and John. He tells us that no such kind of authority and 
power as is practised in earthly government — the authority of men, 
rank, or power carrying it dictatorially and tyrannically over subjects 
and dependants — is to be admitted among his disciples; greatness 
among them being a thing to be measured not by the amount of 
power possessed, but by the amount of service rendered, by their 
greater likeness to the Son of man, "who came not to be minis- 
tered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." 
The contention is thus momentarily hushed, to break out again, whet 
it shall receive a still more impressive rebuke. 

Jesus and his disciples, and a great multitude of people who had 
joined themselves to him by the way, now drew near to Jericho. Of 
what occurred in and near the city I offer no continuous narrative, 
for it is difficult to frame such out of the details which the different 
evangelists' present. St. Mark and St. Luke tell us of one blind man 
only who was healed. St. Matthew tells us of two. Two of the 
three evangelists speak of the healing as having occurred on Christ's 
departure out of the town, the third of its having taken place on his 
entrance into it. We may conclude with certainty that fliere were 
two, and we may conjecture there were three blind men cured on this 
occasion. In a city so large as Jericho then was, computed to con- 
tain well-nigh 100,000 inhabitants — the number swelled by the 
strangers on their way to the passover — it would not surprise us that 
more cases than one of the kind described should have occurred. 
One general remark upon this and all similar discrepancies in tlis 
gospel narratives may be offered. It is quite enough to vindicate the 
entire truthfulness of each separate account, that we can imagine 
some circumstance or circumstances omitted by all, the occurrence (»J 
which would enable us to reconcile them. How often does it happen 



480 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

that two or three witnesses each tell what they saw and heard; their 
testimonies taken by themselves present almost insuperable diffieul 
ties in the way of reconciling them ; yet when the whole in all its 
minute details is known, the key is then put into our hands by which 
the apparent discord is at once removed. And when the whole nevei 
can be known, is it not the wisest course to let the discrepancies 
remain just as we find them ; satisfied if we can imagine any way by 
which all that each narrator says is true ? 

This can easily enough b© done in the case before us. Satisfied 
with this, let us fix our attention on the stories of Bart'imeus and 
Zaccheus, on the two striking incidents by which our Lord's entrance 
into and exit from Jericho were made for ever memorable. How 
different in all the outward circumstances of their lot in life were 
these two men ! — the one a poor blind beggar, the other among the 
richest men in the community. The revenues derived from the palm- 
trees and balsam- gardens of Jericho were so great, that the g.rant of 
them was one of the richest gifts which Antony presented Cleopatra. 
Herod farmed them of the latter, and intrusted the collection of them 
to these publicans, of whom Zaccheus was the chief. His position 
was one enabling him to realize large gains, and we may believe that 
of that position he had taken the full advantage. Unlike in other 
things, in this Bartimeus and Zaccheus were at one — in their eager- 
ness, their earnestness, their perseverance, their resolution to use all 
possible means to overcome all obstacles thrown in the way of their 
approach to Christ. The poor blind beggar sits beneath the shade 
of some towering palm, waiting to salute each stray passenger as he 
goes by, and solicit alms. Suddenly he hears the tread as of a great 
multitude approaching. He wonders what it can be. He asks; 
they tell him that Jesus of Nazareth is coming, and is about to pass 
by. Jesus of Nazareth! he had heard of him before, heard of heal- 
ings wrought by him, of blind eyes opened, of dead men raised. 
Many a time in his darkness, in his solitude, as he sat alone by the 
wayside, he had pondered who this great miracle-worker could be 
and he had come to the conclusion that he could be no other than 
the Son of David, the Messiah promised to their fathers. It had 
never crossed his thoughts that he and this Jesus should ever meet 
when now they tell him that he is near at hand, will soon be passing 
by. He can, he may do that for him which none but he can do. 
The whole faith and hope of his spirit breathed into it, he lifts the 
loud and eager cry, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me." They 
check him, they blame him, in every way they can they try to stop 
him. He cries "the more a great deal; " it is his one and only 



ZACCHEUS. 481 

chance. He will not lose it, he will do all he can to reach that ear, to 
arrest that passer-by. He cries the more a great deal, "Son of 
David, have mercy on me." 

So is it with the poor blind beggar, and so is it with the rich 
publican. He too hears that Jesus of Nazareth is coming into 
Jericho. He too has heard much about the Nazarene. He is living 
now, he may have been living then, in the very neighborhood where 
John the Baptist taught, where Jesus was himself baptized. The 
gospel of the kingdom as preached by both, the gospel of repentance, 
of turning from all iniquity and bringing forth fruits meet for repent- 
ance, was familiar to his ears. The Baptist's answer to publicans 
when they came to him, " Exact no more than that which is appointed 
you," had sunk into his heart. That was the kingdom, the kingdom 
of truth, of righteousness, into which now above all things he desired 
to enter. With a conscience quickened, a heart melted and subdued 
we know not how, he hears that Jesus is at hand. What would he 
not give even for a sight of one whom secretly he has learned to 
reverence and to love ! He goes out, but there is a crowd coming ; he 
cannot stand its pressure ; he is little of stature, and in the bustle and 
the throng will not be able even to catch a sight of Jesus. A happy 
thought occurs : he sees behind him a large tree which casts its branch- 
ing arms across the path. He runs and climbs up into the -tree. Ho 
cares not for the ridicule with which he may be assailed. He cares 
not for the grotesque position which he, the rich man and the honor- 
able, may be seen to occupy. He is too bent upon his purpose to let 
that or anything stand in the way of the accomplishment of his desire. 

And now let us notice how these two men are treated. Jesus 
stands still as he comes near the spot where poor Bartimeus stands 
and cries, points to him, and tells those around him to go and bring 
him into his presence. The crowd halts. The messengers do Christ's 
bidding. And now the very men who had been rebuking Bartimeus 
for his too loud and too impatient entreaties, touched with pity, say, 
" Be of good comfort, rise, he calleth thee." He does not need to be 
told a second time, he does not wait for any guiding hands to lead 
him to the centre of the path. His own quick ear has fixed the 
point from which the summons comes. His own ready arm flings 
aside the rude garment that he had worn, which might hinder him 
in his movement. A few eager footsteps taken, he stands in the pres- 
ence of the Lord. Nor has he then to renew his supplication. 
Jesus is the first to speak. " What wilt thou that I should do unto 
thee?" There are not many things among which to choose. There 
is that one thing that above all others he would have done. " Lord,' 

Ufe of Ohilit 31 



482 THE LIFE OF CHHIST 

says lie, " that I might receive my sight." And Jesus said, " Receive 
thy sight, go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole." And imme- 
diately he received his sight. 

See now how it fares with Zaccheus. He has got up into the 
tree, he is sitting there among its branches, half hoping that, seeing 
all, he may remain himself unseen. The crowd comes up. He does 
not need to ask which is the one he desires so much to see. There 
ho is, the centre of the throng, his calm, majestic, benignant look and 
bearing marking him off from all around. The eyes of the chief 
publican are bent upon him in one fixed concentrated gaze of wonder 
and of love, when a new ground of wonder and of gratitude is given. 
Here too Jesus stops, and looking up he names him by his name, as 
if he had known him long and well. "Zaccheus," he said, "make 
haste and come down ; for to-day I must abide at thy house." 

Such is the free spontaneous mercy in either case exercised by 
our Lord ; such is the way in which he meets simplicity of faith, ardor 
of desire, strenuousness of effort, as seen in the blind beggar and in 
the rich publican. And what in either case is the return? "Go thy 
way," said Jesus to Bartimeus. He did not go, he could not go. 
His blinded eyes are opened. The first object they rest on is their 
opener. Bright shines the sun above — fair is that valley of the Jor- 
dan — gorgeous the foliage of the palm and the sycamore, the acacia 
and the balsam-tree. New and wondrous sights to him, but he sees 
them not, or heeds them not. That fresh faculty of vision is exer- 
cised on Him by whom it had been bestowed, and upon Him all the 
wealth of its power is lavished. And him "he follows, glorifying 
God." Not otherwise is it with Zaccheus : " Make haste," said Jesus, 
" and come down." And he made haste, and came down, and received 
Christ joyfully, little heeding the derisive looks cast on him as he 
made his quick descent, the murmurings that arose from the multi- 
tude as he received Jesus into his house. The threshold is scarcely 
crossed when he stands in all humility before Jesus and says : " Be- 
hold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor ; and if I have 
taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him 
fourfold." One scarce can tell whether he is describing a practice 
for some time previously pursued, or a purpose then for the first 
time in the presence of Jesus deliberately taken. In either case the 
evidence of a true repentance on his part is the same. The mai. 
among the Jews who gave the fifth part of his income to the pooi> 
was counted as having reached the height of perfection as to alms- 
giving. Zaccheus gives one-half, and not one-fifth. The law of Moses 
required in one special case alone that a fourfold restitution should 



JESUS AT JERICHO. 483 

be made Zacclieus, in every instance in which he can relnembei 
that by any dishonorable practice on his part any man had suffered 
loss promises that restitution to that extent should be made to him. 
Jesus, accepting the evidence of a true repentance that is thus pre - 
rented, makes no criticism upon the course of conduct indicated, 
suggests no change, but says, "This day is salvation come to thin 
house, forasmuch as he also is a son of Abraham" — once a lost sheep 
of the chosen fold, lost, but now found by the Good Shepherd, and 
by him welcomed back — "for the Son of man," he adds, "is come to 
seek and to save that which was lost." 

One general feature of these incidents at Jericho let us now glance 
at, as singularly appropriate to this particular period of our Lord's 
history, the absence of all reserve, the full disclosure of himself and 
of his redemption which he makes. Other blind men had called him 
the Son of David, but he had straitly charged them not to make him 
known. No such charge is given to Bartimeus. He is permitted to 
follow him and glorify God as loudly, as amply as he can. Not till 
the last stage of his ministry in the north had he ever spoken even 
to his disciples of his death. Now he not only speaks to them 
more plainly and explicitly than ever before, but he goes on to 
announce the great intention and object of his death. The Son of 
Man, he declares, is come " to give his life a ransom for many ; to 
seek and to save that which was lost." Thus it is, as the time is 
now so near, and as all the reasons for that reserve which Jesus had 
previously studied are removed, that he holds up his death as the 
payment of the great price of our redemption, the ransom given 
by the Living One for the lost. 

Two better instances illustrative of how the sinner and the Saviour 
are brought together, of what true faith is, and what true repentance, 
you could not well desire, than those of Bartimeus and Zaccheus, 
capable each of manifold spiritual applications. We can but gather 
up the general warnings and great encouragements that they convey. 
Sinners we all by nature and practice are — as poor, as blind, as 
beggared as Bartimeus was — as thoughtless, careless, reckless, world- 
ly-minded as Zaccheus. And Jesus of Nazareth is passing by. It is 
but a single day we have for meeting with him, that short day of 
life, the twelve hours of which are so swiftly running out. Let us 
but be as earnest to see him as those two men were, as careless of 
what others say or do, as resolute to overcome all difficulties ; and we 
shall find that he will be as ready to hear, to heal, to come to us, to 
take up his abode with us, to bring salvation with him, to gather us, 
the lost, into the fold of the saved. 



184 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

Jericho is changed from what it was. So little is left of the city, 
of its hippodrome and amphitheatre, its towers and its palaces, thai 
it is difficult to determine its site. Its gardens and its groves are 
gone, not one solitary palm-tree for a blind beggar to sit beneath, 
nor a sycamore for any one to climb. The City of Fragrance it wag 
called of old. There remains now but the fragrance of those deeds 
of grace and mercy done there by him who in passing through it 
closed his earthly journeyings, and went up thence to Jerusalem 
to die. 



XVII. 

The Anointing at -Bethany.* 

In the whole bearing and conduct of Jesus in and about Jericho 
there was much to indicate that some great crisis in his history was 
at hand. It does not surprise us to be told of the disciples' believing 
"that the kingdom of God should immediately appear." It was 
because he knew that they were so misconceiving the future that lay 
before him and them, that, either in the house of Zaccheus, or after- 
wards on the way up to Jerusalem, Jesus addressed to them the 
parable of the Pounds. He would have them know, and could they 
but have penetrated the meaning of that parable they would have 
seen, that so far from any such kingdom as they were dreaming of 
being about to be set up for him in Jerusalem, he was going through 
the dark avenue of death to another, to a far country, to receive the 
kingdom there, and after a long interval to return ; and that, so far 
from their being about to share the honors and rewards of a newly 
erected empire, they were to be left without a Head, each man to 
occupy and to labor till He came again. Another parable, that of the 
Laborers in the Vineyard, spoken but a day or two before, had a 
kindred object — was intended to check the too eager and ambitious 
thirst for the distinctions and recompenses that the apostles imagined 
were on the eve of being dispensed. The addressing of two such 
parables as these to his disciples, with the specific object of rectify- 
ing what he knew to be their false ideas and expectations, the readi- 
ness with which he listened to the cry of the blind beggars by the 
wayside, and the interest that he took in the chief of the publicans, 
conspire to show how far from a mere narrow or selfish one was the 
interest with which Jesus looked forward to what was awaiting him 

* Matt. 26 • G-13 ; Mark 14 : 3-9 ; John 12 : 1-8. 



THE ANOINTING AT BET BANT. 485 

in Jerusalem. During the two days' journey from Penea through 
Jericho to the holy city, his thoughts were often and absorbingly 
fixed on his approaching sufferings and death, but it was not so 
much in their isolated and personal as in their public and world- 
Tide bearings and issues that he was contemplating them ; nor had 
he contemplation any such effect as to make him less attentive to 
die state of thought and feeling prevailing among his disciples, 01 less 
ready to be interested in those who, like Bartimeus and Zaccheus, 
threw themselves in his way. 

In coming down into the valley of the Jordan, Jesus had joined 
the large and growing stream of people from the north and the east, 
passing up to the approaching Passover. There would be many 
Galileans among the group who had not seen him now for many 
months, and who, if they had not heard of it before, must have heard 
now at Jericho of all that had happeued at the two preceding Feasts 
of Tabernacles and Dedication, of his last great miracle at Bethany, 
of the great excitement that had been created, and of the resolution 
of the Sanhedrim to put him to death. And now he goes up to face 
these rulers, to throw himself, as they fancy, upon the support of the 
people, to unfold the banner of the new kingdom, and call on all his 
followers to rally round it. His Galilean friends heartily go in with 
what they take to be his designs ; they find the people generally con- 
curring in and disposed to further them. One can imagine what 
was thought and felt, and hoped and feared, by those who accom- 
panied Jesus as he left Jericho. A few hours' walk would now carry 
him and them to the metropolis. It was Friday, the 8th day of their 
Jewish month Nisan. The next day was Saturday, their Jewish Sab- 
bath. On the Thursday following the lamb was to be slain, and the 
Passover festival to commence. The great body of the travellers 
press on, to get into the towm before the sunset, when the Sabbath 
commences. Jesus and his apostles turn aside at Bethairy, where 
the house of Martha and Mary and Lazarus stands open to receive 
them. Here in this peaceful retreat the next day is spent, a quiet 
Sabbath for our Lord before entering on the turmoil of the next few 
dsijs. The companions of his last day's journey have in the mean- 
time passed into Jerusalem. It is already thronged with those who 
had come up from the country to purify themselves for the feast. 
With one and all the engrossing topic is Jesus of Nazareth. Gather- 
ing in the courts of the temple, they ask about him, they hear what 
has occurred; they find that "both the chief priests and the Phari- 
sees had given a commandment, that if any man knew where he was, 
he should show it, that Ohey might take him." AA'hat, in the face of 



iS6 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

such an order, will Jesus do? "What think ye," they say to one 
another, "that he will not come to the feast?" But now they heai 
from the newly arrived from Jericho that he is coming, means to be 
at the feast, is already at Bethany. They hear that Lazarus, the 
man whom he so recently raised from the dead, is also there. He 
may not have been there till now. He may have accompanied Jesus 
to Ephraim, or chosen some other place of temporary retreat, for a 
bitter enmity had sprung up against him as well as against Jesus, 
" The chief priests had consulted that they might put Lazarus also 
to death, because that by reason of him many of the Jews believed 
on Jesus." Whether he had retired for a time or not, Lazarus is 
now at Bethany. Many, unable to restrain their curiosity, go out 
to the village, "not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might see 
Lazarus also." It was but a short distance, not much more than a 
Sabbath-day's journey. During this day, while Jesus and Lazarus 
are there together, many visitors go forth to feast their eyes upon 
the sight, and on returning to quicken the excitement among the 
multitude. 

It was on the evening of the Saturday, when the Sabbath was 
over, and the next, the first day of the week, had begun, that they 
made Jesus a supper in the house of Simon, who once had been a 
leper, some near relative in all likelihood of the family of Lazarus, 
and Jesus sits at this feast between the one whom he had cured of 
his leprosy and the other whom he had raised from the dead. 
Martha serves. She had not so read the rebuke before administered 
to her as to believe that serving — the thing that she most liked, to 
which her disposition and her capabilities at once prompted her — 
was in itself unlawful or improper, that her only duty was to sit and 
listen. But she had so profited by the rebuke that, concerned as she 
is that all due care be taken that this feast be well served, she turns 
now no jealous look upon her sister, leaves Mary without murmuring 
or reproach to do as she desires. And Mary seizes the opportunity 
now given. She has not now Jesus to herself. She cannot, as in the 
privacy of her own dwelling, sit down at his feet to listen to the 
gracious words coming from his lips. But she has an alabaster phial 
of fragrant ointment — her costliest possession — one treasured up for 
some unknown but great occasion. That occasion has arrived. She 
gets it, brings it, approaches Jesus as he sits reclining at the table, 
pours part of its contents upon his head, and resolves that the whole 
contents shall be expended upon him. She compresses the yielding 
material of which the phial was composed, breaks it, and pours the 
last drop of it upon his feet, flinging away the relics of the broken 



THE ANOINTING AT BETHANY. 487 

ressel, and wiping his feet with her hair. Kingly guest at royal 
banquet could not have had a costlier homage of the kind rendered 
to him. That Mary had in her possession so rich a treasure may be 
accepted as one of the many signs that her family was one of the 
wealthiest in the village. That she now took and spent the whole of 
it upon Jesus, was but a final expression of the fulness and the 
intensity of her devotion and her love. 

Half hidden behind the Saviour's reclining form, she might 
have remained unnoticed, but the fragrant odor rose and filled the 
house, and drew attention to her deed. Cold and searching and 
jealous eyes are upon her, chiefly those of one who never had any 
cordial love to Jesus, who never had truly sympathized with the 
homage rendered him, who held the bag, had got himself appointed 
keeper of the small parse they had in common, who already had 
been tampering with the trust, and greedily filching from the narrow 
stores committed to his care. Love so ardent, consecration so entire, 
sacrifice so costly as that of Mary, he could not appreciate. He dis- 
liked it, condemned it; it threw such a reproach by contrast upon 
his own feeling and conduct to Christ. And now to his envious, 
avaricious spirit it appears that he has got good ground for censure. 
He had been watching the movements of Mary, had seen her bring 
forth the phial, had measured its size, had gauged the quantity, esti- 
mated the quality, and calculated the value of its contents. And now 
he turns to his fellow-disciples, and whispers in their ears the invid- 
ious question, " Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred 
pence, and given to the poor?" Three hundred pence ! equal to the 
hire of a laborer for a whole year — a sum capable of relieving many 
a child of poverty, of bringing relief to many a house of want. Had 
Judas got the money into his own hands — instead of being all lav- 
ished on this act of outward attention, had it been thrown into the 
common stock — it would not have been upon the poor that it should 
have been spent. He would have managed that no small part of the 
money should have had a very different direction given it. But it 
serves his mean malicious object to suggest that such might have 
been its destination. And by his craft, which has a show in it of a 
wise and thoughtful benevolence, he draws more than one of his 
fellow- apostles along with him, so that not loud but deep, the mur- 
muring runs round the table, and they say to one another, "To what 
purpose is this waste? this ointment might have been sold for 
much, and given to the poor." 

Mary hears the murmuring, sees the eyes of one and another 
tn -ned askance and condemningly upon her, shrinks under the de 



438 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

tracting criticism of the Lord's own apostles, begins to wondei 
whether she may not have done something wrong, been guilty of a 
piece of extravagance which even Jesus may perhaps condemn. It 
had been hard for her before to bear the reproach of her bustling 
sister, but harder a thousand times to bear the reproach of the 
twelve. But neither then nor now did she make any answer, offer 
any defence of herself. She did not need. She had one to do that 
office for her far better than she could have done it for herself. Jesus 
is there to throw the mantle of his protection over her, to explain and 
vindicate her deed. "Let her alone," he said, " why trouble ye the 
woman? she hath wrought a good work upon me." He might have 
singled out the first adverse criticiser of Mary's act, the suggester 
and propagator of the censorious judgment that was making its 
round of the table. Then and there he might have exposed the 
hollowness, the hypocrisy of the pretence about Ms caring for the 
poor, upon which the condemnation of Mary was based. And doing 
so, he might have made the others blush that they had given such 
ready ear to a speech that such a mean and malignant spirit had 
first broached. He did not do this, at least he said nothing that had 
any peculiar and exclusive reference to Judas. But there must have 
been something in our Lord's manner — a look perhaps, such as he 
bent afterwards on Peter in the judgment-hall — that let Judas know 
that before Jesus he stood a detected thief and hypocrite. And it 
was not to weep bitterly that he went forth from that supper, but 
with a spirit so galled and fretted that he took the earliest opportu- 
nity that occurred to him to commune with the chief priests and the 
temple guard as to how he might betray his master, and deliver him 
into their hands. 

Losing sight of him, let us return to Christ's defence of Mary. 
"She hath done a good work," he said, 'a noble work, one not only 
far from censure, but worthy of all praise. She hath done it unto 
me, done it out of pure deep love — a love that will bring the best, the 
costliest thing she has, and think it no waste, but rather its fittest, 
worthiest application, to bestow it upon me.' Upon that ground 
alone, upon his individual claims as compared with all others, Jesus 
might well have rested his vindication of Mary's act. Nay, might he 
not have taken the censure of her as a disparagement of himself? 
All these his general claims — which go to warrant the highest, cost- 
liest, most self-sacrificing services that an enthusiastic piety can 
render — he in this instance is content to waive, fixing upon the pecu- 
liarity of his existing position and the speciality of the particular 
service that she has rendered, as supplying of themselves an ample 






THE ANOINTING AT BETHANY. 489 

justification of the deed that had been condemned. The claims of 
the poor had been set up, as if they stood opposed to any such ex- 
penditure of property as that made by Mary in this anointing of the 
Saviour. It was open to Christ to say that it was an altogether need- 
less, false, injurious conflict thus sought to be stirred' up — as if to 
give to him, to do anything for him, were to take so much from the 
poor ; as if no portion of the great fund of the church's wealth was 
available for any purely devout and religious purpose till all the 
wants of all the poor were met and satisfied — wants, be it remem- 
bered, of such a kind that though we supplied them all to-day, 
would emerge in some new form to-morrow — wants which it is im- 
possible so to deal with as wholly and permanently to relieve. He 
is no enlightened pleader for the poor who would represent them and 
their necessities as standing in the way of the indulgence of those 
warm impulses of love to Christ, out of which princely benefactions, 
as well as many a deed of heroic self-sacrifice, have emanated. The 
spirit of Judas, indeed — cold, calculating, carping, disparaging — has 
often crept even into the Christian society, and men bearing the 
name of Jesus have often been ready, when great donations on behalf 
of some strictly religious enterprise were spoken of, to condemn them 
off-hand on this one ground, that it would have been much better 
hud the money been bestowed upon the poor. Just as, when a large 
estate was once sold in this country, and the proprietor, moved by a 
favored idea, resolved to devote the entire proceeds of the sale to 
Christian missions in India, there were not wanting those who said — 
I quote now the words of one of them — " What a mad scheme this 
of Haldane's ! How many poor people might that money have fed 
and clothed ?" The world, let us bless God for it, is not so poor that 
there is but one way — that, namely, of almsgiving — for gratifying 
those generous impulses which visit the heart and impel to acts of 
singular liberality. He who put it into the heart of Mary to do 
what she did towards the person of Christ, has put it into the hearts 
of others since to do like things towards his cause. And if in many 
such like instances there be more of mere emotion, more of the indul- 
gence of individual taste than of staid and wise-hearted Christian 
benevolence, let us not join with the condemnors of them, unless we 
be prepared to put a check upon all the free, spontaneous expressions 
of those sentiments of veneration, gratitude, and love to Jesus Christ, 
out of which some of the most chivalrous and heroic deeds have 
sprung by which the history of our race has been adorned. 

It is, however, as has been already said, upon somewhat narrower 
ground that Christ vindicates the act of Mary. It was one of such 



490 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

personal attention to him as could be shown to him only while he 
was present in the flesh. "The poor," said he, "ye have with you 
always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good, but me ye 
have not always." Further still, it was one that but once only in all 
his earthly life could be shown to Jesus, for "in that she hath poured 
this ointment on me, she is come aforehand to anoint my body for 
the burial." Had Mary any definite idea that she was doing before- 
hand what Joseph and Nicodemus would have no time and opportu- 
nity for doing, what the two other Marys would go out to do to find 
only that the need for its being done was over and gone ? It may be 
assuming too much for her to believe that, with a clearer insight and 
a simpler faith in what Jesus had said than had yet been reached by 
any of the twelve, she anticipated the death and burial of her Master 
as near at hand. But neither can we think that she acted without 
some vague presentiment that she was seizing upon a last oppor- 
tunity, that the days of such intercourse with Jesus were drawing to 
an end. She knew the perils to which he would be exposed when- 
ever he entered Jerusalem. She had heard him speak of his approach- 
ing sufferings and death. To others the words might appear to be 
without meaning, or only to be allegorically interpreted, but the 
quick instinct of her deeper love had refused to regard them so, and 
they had filled her bosom with an indefinite dread. The nearer the 
time for losing, the more intense became the clinging to him. Had 
she believed as the others around her did, had she looked forward 
to a speedy triumph of Jesus over all his enemies, and to the visible 
erection of his kingdom, would she have chosen the time she did for 
the anointing? would she not have reserved to a more fitting oppor- 
tunity a service that was more appropriate to the crowning of a new 
monarch than the preparing of a living body for the tomb ? In 
speaking as he did, Jesus may have been only attributing to Mary a 
fuller understanding of and simpler faith in his own prophetic utter- 
ances than that possessed at the time by any of his disciples. Such 
a conception of her state of mind and heart would elevate Mary to a 
still higher pinnacle than that ordinarily assigned to her, and we can 
see no good reason for doubting that it was even so. But it does 
not require that we should assign to her any such preeminence of 
faith. It was the intensity of the personal attachment to Jesus that 
her act expressed which drew down upon it the encomium of the 
Lord. Thus he had to say of it what he could say of so few single 
services of any of his followers — that in* it she did what she could, 
did all she could— in that direction there was not a step farther that 
she could have taken. Of all like ways and forms of expressing 



THE ANOINTING AT BETHANY. 491 

attachment there was not a higher one that she could have chosen. 
Her whole heart of love went out in the act, and therefore Jesus 
said of it, "Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall he 
preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done 
shall be spoken of for a memorial of her" — the one and only case 
in which Jesus ever spoke of the after earthly fame of any service 
rendered to him, predicting for it such a widespread reputation and 
such an undying remembrance. Thus said Chrysostom, when dis- 
coursing upon this incident : "While the victories of many kings and 
generals are lost in silence, and many who have founded states and 
reduced nations to subjection are not known by reputation or by 
name, the pouring of ointment by this woman is celebrated through- 
out the whole world. Time hath passed away, but the memory of 
the deed she did hath not waned away. But Persians and Indians 
and Scythians and Thracians, and the race of the Mauritanians, and 
they who inhabit the British Isles, publish abroad an act which was 
done in Judea privately in a house by a woman." Fourteen hundred 
years have passed and gone since in the great church of St. Sophia 
at Constantinople Chrysostom uttered these words, referring to these 
British Isles as one of the remotest places of the then known world. 
The centuries that have rolled by since then have witnessed many a 
revolution, not the least wonderful among them the place that these 
British Isles now occupy, but still wider and wider is the tale of Mary's 
anointing of her Master being told, the fragrance of the ointment 
spreading, yet losing nothing of its sweetness ; such fresh vitality, such 
self-preserving power, lodging in a simple act of pure and fervid love. 
One single parting glance let us cast upon our Saviour as ne 
presents himself to our eye upon this occasion. He sits at a festive 
board. He is surrounded by men looking joyously forward to days 
and years of success and triumph. But he knows what they do 
not — that on that day week his body will be lying in the new-made 
sepulchre. And he accepts the anointing at Mary's hand as prepar- 
ing his body for the burial. He sits the invited guest of a man who 
had been a leper, surrounded in that village home by a few humble 
followers. With serene eye he looks down into the future, and abroad 
over the earth, and speaks of it as a thing of certainty that this 
gospel— the gospel of glad tidings of salvation in his name — was to 
be preached throughout the whole world. If it be true that Jesus 
thought and felt and spoke and acted thus, how vain the attempt to 
explain away his foresight of the future, to reduce it to the dimen- 
sions of the highest human wisdom sagaciously anticipating what 
was afterwards to occur. 



492 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 

With Part IV the lessons enter upon the profound and world-moving 
period of our Lord's life known as the Passion Week. Passion here 
has its primary meaning of suffering. So tremendous is the value of 
this week in the work of redemption that the record of it covers about 
one-third of the material of the Gospels, and Dr. Hanna in this book 
gives a like proportion of pages to it. 

The present lesson covers Sunday, known as the Day of Triumph, 
and Monday, the Day of Authority, because upon those days Christ 
made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem and again cleansed the Temple 
as he had at the beginning of his ministry. It is of course to be remem- 
bered that Sunday was not then the sacred rest-day. Saturday, 
according to the old covenant, had been given to rest, and Christ had 
spent that day at Bethany. On Sunday, at a little village nearer to 
the city Christ, through his disciples, secures a young donkey, and 
seated upon the colt he proceeds around the southern shoulder of the 
Mount of Olives in his triumphal progress toward Jerusalem. As he 
beholds the city, he weeps over it and predicts its destruction. Acclaimed 
by the multitude he enters the city and the temple, and then returns 
to Bethany. On Monday, in his visit to the temple there shines out 
once more the majesty of his divine presence and authority. 



PART IV. PASSION WEEK'TO GETHSEMANE. 
Study 16. Triumphal Entry and Day of Authority. 

(1) The road which Christ would use 493, 494 

(2) Preparations and first stage of procession 494-496 

(3) Christ's lament over Jerusalem 496-498 

(4) Conclusion of the triumphal entry . ; 498 

(5) Significance of Christ's tears and lamentation 498-500 

a. Christ's foreknowledge shown 498, 499 

5. Opportunity of choice 499 

c. Line of destiny passed 499, 500 

(6) Return to Bethany 498-501 

(7) Blighting of the barren fig-tree 501-504 

(8) Second cleansing of temple 505-507 

a. The traffickers cast out ... 505, 506 

b. The blind and the lame healed 506 

c. Hosannas of the children . ....»* 507 



THE PASSION WEEK. 



I. 



The Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem — Jesus weep- 
ing oyer the City.* 

SUNDAY, 

The road from Jericho to Jerusalem, as it winds up the eastern 
slopes of Olivet, passes close by the village of Bethany. From the 
village a footpath runs up to the top of the mount, and thence down 
a steep declivity into the ravine of the Kedron. This being the 
shortest, may have been the path ordinarily taken by the villagers 
when going on foot to and from Jerusalem. It was not the way that 
Mij rider, not the way that the caravans of Passover pilgrims coming 
up from Jericho, would choose. They naturally would take the 
somewhat longer, but much better and more level road, which runs 
round the southern shoulder of the ridge as it shelves down toward 
the Mount of Offence. The single circumstance that, on the occasion 
now before us, Jesus rode into the city, might of itself have led us to 
believe that it was by the latter road he went. Still further confir- 
mation of this meets us as we enter into the details of this short but 
ever memorable procession. 

The quiet day of Sabbatic rest at Bethany is over. Released 
from its restraints, visitors may now freely pass from Jerusalem to 
Bethany. Of this freedom numbers avail themselves, and the village 
is crowded. It is understood that at some time in the course of the 
day — the first day of the week — Jesus means to go into the city. 
During the forenoon the tidings of his intention are widely circulated, 
It was now but four days to the I^ssover, and the crowds of pilgrims, 
requiring as they did a day or two of preparation, have nearly all 
arrived. In and about Jerusalem between two and three millions of 

Matt. 21 : 1-11 ; Mark 11 : 1-11 ; Luke 19 : 29-44 ; John 12 : 12-18. 



194 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

people* — more than a third of the entire population of Judea and 
Galilee — are assembled. The town itself is unable to afford accom- 
modation to all the strangers. The environs all around are studded 
with booths and tents. The side of Olivet that looks toward the 
city, not the least favorite suburb, along which the road from Jericho 
descends, is covered with these temporary erections. In the after- 
noon Jesus leaves the village and joins the companies coming up 
from the valley of the Jordan. The road winds southward for a 
short distance out upon a ledge of the mountain, from the top of 
which is caught a distant view of a part of Mount Zion lying outside 
the walls, the great city itself being concealed. At this point, imme- 
diately before and beneath the traveller, there is a deep hollow run- 
ning up into and dying out upon the hill side, to avoid descending 
into which the road takes first a sudden bend to the right, till it 
reaches nearly to the top of the ravine, and then turns again to the 
left, to traverse the opposite spur of the mountain. Pausing for a 
moment at this spot, Jesus sees ' over against' him, across the hollow, 
the village of Bethphage.f Calling two of his disciples he bids them 
go by the short cut across the valley to the village, and bring an ass 
and a colt that they would find there, and to have them ready upon 
the road running near to Bethphage by the time that he and the rest 
of the disciples have made the round by the head of the hollow.:) 
The disciples listen with wonder to these instructions. It is but a 
short distance into the town — an hour's walk, or less ; it cannot be 
through weariness that Jesus wishes to have an ass to ride upon. 
He had seldom if ever before used this mode of travelling, one not 
having any special dignity in our eyes, but one that highest dignita- 
ries in the East, kings and princes, prophets and priests, might not 
unsuitably, upon the most important occasions, make use of. Can it 
be that the hour so long waited for has come ? Can it be that Jesus 

* Josephus estimates the numbers present on a Passover occasion at about 
three millions, little short of half the population of the two provinces. The 
number of lambs slain is stated to have been 256,500. 

fThe description of the text is derived from a minute personal examination 
of the localities. Upon the spot where in that description the village of Beth- 
phage is represented as standing, tanks and foundations were perceived, the 
undoubted evidences of the former existence of a village. The site is the same, 
I presume, as the one assigned to the village by Dr. Barclay in the City of the 
Great King. It fully and minutely answers, as I have endeavored to indicate, 
fill the requirements of the narrative. 

% As usual, the narrative of St. Mark is characterized by the mention of minute 
particulars, such as the finding of the colt 'by the door without, in a place where 
two ways met.' St. Mark may have received his information from St. Piiter, 
who may have been one of the two sent across the valley by Christ. 



THE PKOCESSION INTO JEKUSALEM. 495 

is about to throw off his disguise, assume his real rank and character, 
and enter the capital as the king of the Jews? As they move on, 
groups of pilgrims coming out from Jerusalem meet them by the 
way. To them they tell the orders Christ has given — tell the hopes 
that are rising in their hearts. The excitement spreads and deepens. 
They meet the asses by the way. It is the colt, the one upon which 
no man yet had sat, that Jesus chooses. They cast their garments 
on it, and set him thereon. They hail him as their Messiah, their 
King. He does now what he never so fully did before : he accepts 
the title, he receives the .homage. All is true, then, that they had 
been thinking and hoping. It is openly and avowedly as Christ their 
king that he is about to go into Jerusalem. 

Then let all the honors that they can give him be bestowed. It 
is but little of outward pomp or splendor they can throw around this 
regal procession. They cannot turn the narrow mountain path into 
a broad and covered roadway for their king, but they can strip ofl 
their outer garments, and cast them as a carpet beneath his feet. 
They can cut down leafy branches from the olive-trees and strew 
them in his way. Royal standards they have none to carry, they 
have no emblazoned flags of victory to wave. No choice instruments 
of music are here, through which practised lips may pour the swell- 
ing notes of joy and triumph, but they can pluck the palm-tree 
branches (nature's own emblems of victory) and wave them over his 
head, and they can raise their voices in hosannas round him. He 
allows all this, receives it all as seemly and due. The spirit of exul- 
tation and of triumph expands under the liberty and sanction thus 
given. Swelling in numbers, freer and more animated in its expres- 
sions, the procession moves on till the ridge of the hill is gained, and 
the city begins to open to the view. The mighty multitude breaks 
out into acclamations of praise ; those going before and those follow- 
ing after vie with one another, and fill the air with their hosannas — 
applying to Jesus, and this entry into Jerusalem, passages that 
all understood to relate to the Messiah. 'Hosanna to the Son of 
David ; blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord ; hosanna 
in the highest ; blessed be the King, and blessed be the kingdom of 
our father David ; peace in heaven and glory in the highest.' Some 
Pharisees who are looking on and listening press through the crowd 
and speaking to Jesus as one who must know and feel how misplaced 
and how perilous his public acceptance of such homage as this must 
be, would have him stop it. 'Master,' they say to him, 'rebuke thy 
disciples.' 'I tell you,' is his reply, 'that if these should hold then 
peace, the stones would immediately cry out/ 



£96 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Down the sloping path the procession moves. A ledge of rock is 
reached, looking from which across the valley of the Kedron the 
whole city lies spread out before the Saviour's eye.* The sight 
arrests him ; the procession stops. All around is light and joy and 
triumph. But a dark shadow falls upon the Saviour's countenance. 
His eyes fill with tears. He beholds the city, and he weeps over it. 
Another Jerusalem than the one sitting there at ease, clothed in 
holiday attire, busied with its Passover preparations, is before his 
eye — a Jerusalem beset, beleaguered, crouching in fear and terror, 
doomed to a terrible destruction. How little power has the present 
over the mind and heart of Jesus ! What cares he for this adulation 
of the multitude, this parade of praise ? Even had it all been genuine, 
all the outburst of an intelligent faith, an enthusiastic attachment to 
him in his true character and office, it had not checked the current of 
thought and feeling within the Saviour's heart. But he knows how 
hollow it all is, how soon it will all die away. He thinks of the future ; 
but of what future? Why was it not the future of the next few days? 
Why did the scenes that were then before him not call up that 
future? There before him lay the garden of Gethsemane ; there, 
across the valley, outside the city walls, the hill of Calvary ; there, 
in the midst of the lofty buildings that crowned the heights of Zion 
and Moriah, rose the dwelling of the high priest and the palace of 
Herod; and he who is now looking upon these places knows well 
that before another Sabbath dawns he will be lying in agony in 
that garden, that beneath these roofs he will be jeered at and spit 
upon, and mock emblems of royalty forced upon him — the sentence 
of condemnation ratified by the fiendish cries of the city multitude : 
'Away, away with him! crucify, crucify him!' and that there, upon 
the hill of Calvary, he will have to die the death of the cross. It 
had been no disparagement to the humanity of Jesus had the sights 
then before his eyes brought up before his thoughts the sufferings 
and the death with which so soon they were to be associated. But 
there is a higher reach of self-f orgetfulness here than tha t of dead- 
ness or indifference to the acclamations of the surrounding multitudes. 
Jesus puts aside the prospect of his own endurances, though so near 
and so dark. He looks over and beyond them. Without naming 
the city, yet, by some glance of the eye or motion of the hand mak- 
ing clear the reference of his words as he stands weeping, he exclaims : 
'If thou hadst known, even thou, thou upon whom for so many ages 
go much of the divine goodness has been lavished, whose gates the 
Lord has loved more than all the dwellings of Jacob, within whose 
* See Dr. Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, p. 191. 






THE TEAES SHED OVER JERUSALEM. 497 

holy temple for so many generations the smoking altar and the bleed- 
ing sacrifice without, and the gleaming light of the Shekinah within, 
have spoken of a God there waiting to be gracious — if thou, even 
thou, with all thy crowded sins upon thee, thy stoning of the prophets 
and casting forth of those that were sent to thee — if thou at least, at 
last, in this thy day, when, all his other messengers rejected, the 
Father has sent forth his own Son to thee, saying, Surely they will 
reverence my Son — if thou in thy day hadst known the things belong- 
ing to thy peace spoken so often, so earnestly by him.' 

'If thou hadst but known.' The sentence is cut short. For a 
moment the bright vision rises of all that Jerusalem might have been 
had she but known the time of her visitation. Had she but owned 
and welcomed her Messiah when he came, then might she have sat as 
a queen among all the cities of the earth. And he whom she honored 
would have honored her so as to cast all her former glory into the 
shade. Then, without her hands being steeped in the wickedness of 
the deed, or any hands of wickedness being employed to do it, some 
fit altar might have been found or reared, and in sight, not of mock- 
ing enemies, but adoring friends, might the great sacrifice have been 
offered up ; and from Jerusalem, as from the centre of the great 
Christian commonwealth, might the tidings of the completed redemp- 
tion have gone forth, and unto her all the glory and the honor of the 
nations might have been brought. All this, and more, might have 
been in that bright vision which for a moment rises before the 
Saviour's eye. But quickly the vision disappears ; gives place to one, 
alas ! how different. ' But now they are hid from thine eyes. Foi 
the days will come that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, 
and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall 
lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee ; and 
they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou 
knewest not the time of thy visitation.' 

The pause, the tears, the lament over the doomed city, must have 
produced a deep impression on those around. How little could thej 
understand the meaning of what Christ said, or the source of the 
emotion he displayed. One thing was clearly shown : the absence of 
all anticipation on the part of Jesus of any present individual success 
and triumph. There was much in the manner of his reception, in 
the plaudits with which he was hailed, in the popular enthusiasm 
that had found for itself such a vent, to have impelled a mere politi- 
cal adventurer to take advantage of the occasion, and put himself at 
the head of a great national movement. How easy had it been for 
Jesus, had he gone in with the false ideas and expectations of the 

Ufa of ChrUt. 32 



498 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 






thousands then congregated in and about Jerusalem, to have goi 
himself recognized as their leader, and to have created a commotion 
which there were no means at hand to allay ! His thoughts are fai 
otherwise occupied. A sublime compassion fills his spirit, draws 
forth his tears, and prompts those pathetic lamentations. 

We are not told what effect this strange interruption of the 
triumphal march produced. It must have done something to subdue 
the ardor, to quiet the demonstrations of the crowd. The procession, 
however, after the momentary pause, moves on ; the hosannas abated, 
it may have been, but still continued. They go down into the valley, 
they cross the Kedron, they climb the heights on which the city stood, 
they enter into the nearest gate. The whole city is moved. The 
great bulk of the town population look askance upon this singular 
spectacle, far less acquainted with and less interested in Jesus than 
the strangers from the country. 

'Who is this?' they say, as they see Jesus in the centre of the 
excited multitude ; c and what can all this mean ? ' They are told by 
those taking part in the procession: 'This is Jesus, the prophet, of 
Nazareth of Galilee.' How they received the intelligence we do not 
know ; with something of wonder we may believe, and not a little of 
incredulity and dislike. The movement, however, is too deep and too 
extensive for any instant questioning of its character or interruption 
of its progress. The authorities, taken in all likelihood by surprise, 
do not interfere. Jesus goes up into the temple, looks round upon 
all things that he saw there, and, the eventide being now come, 
(Mark 11 : 11,) he turns, retraces his steps, and retires, we know not 
how attended, to the quiet home at Bethany. 

Upon the triumphal procession into the city, especially upon the 
tears which -Jesus shed and the lamentation that he poured over 
Jerusalem, let us offer one or two remarks. 

1. How clear the proof here given of our Lord's intimate fore- 
knowledge of all that was afterwards to occur! Any one might have 
ventured on a prediction, grounding it upon what he knew of the 
existing relationships between the Roman power and the Jewish 
community, that a collision was imminent, that in that collision the 
weaker party would be conquered, and Jerusalem should fall ; but 
who save he to whom the future was as the present could have spoken 
as Jesus did of the days when the enemy should cast a trench, anc? 
raise a mound, and compass it round, and keep it in on every side ? 

Josephus tells us how to the very letter all this was fulfilled — how 
at an early stage of the four months' siege, Titus, the Eoman general 
ki command summoned a council of war, at which three plans w T ere 



THE TEAES SHED OYER JERUSALEM. 499 

discussed : to storm the city, or to repair and rebuild the engines 
that had been destroyed, or to blockade the city and starve it into 
surrender. The third was the method adopted, and by incredible 
labor, the whole army engaging in the work, a wall was raised, which 
compassed the city round and round, and hemmed it in on every side. 

2. A fresh mysterious awe attaches to the tears of Jesus shed thus 
beforehand over Jerusalem, as we think that they were shed by hi in 
whose own hand inflicted the judgment over which he lamented. Iu 
this aspect these tears are typical, and have been rightly taken as 
representative and expressive of the emotion with which Christ con- 
templates the great spiritual catastrophe of the ruin of lost souls. 
It might have been otherwise than it was with the doomed city. 
Had it been utterly impossible for her to have averted that calamity, 
had that impossibility been due, as it must have been had it existed, 
to Christ's own ordinance, there had been hypocrisy in his tears, in 
his weeping over the calamity as if it had been a curse drawn down 
by Jerusalem upon herself by her own acts and deeds. But the 
alternative had been set before the city ; the things belonging to her 
peace had been revealed; she might have known them; it was her 
own fault she did not; had she known, the terrible fate had not 
befallen her. So it is with every lost spirit of our race. The things 
belonging to our peace with God have been made clearly known and 
openly set before us. They are ours in offer ; if we will, they may be 
ours in possession. There is no outward hinder ance, no invincible 
obstacle whatever to our entering into that peace, nothing but our 
own unwillingness to be saved as Jesus desires to save us. If any of 
us perish, over us the Saviour shall weep as over those who have 
been the instruments of their own ruin. 

How impressively too are we here taught that the day of grace, 
the opportunity of return to and reconciliation with God, has its fixed 
limits, narrower often than the day of life. Apparently Jerusalem's 
day of grace extended for years beyond the time when he uttered the 
words of doom, and let fall the tears of sympathy. Miracles were 
wrought in her streets, exhortations and remonstrances addressed to 
her children; but to that all-seeing eye before which the secret things 
of God's spiritual kingdom lie open, the things belonging to her 
peace were from that time hid from her eyes. The door was shut, 
the doom was sealed. A like event happened of old to Esau when 
he sold his birthright. That was the point of doom in his career, 
and having passed it he found no place for repentance, for changing 
the divine purpose regarding him, though he sought it carefully with 
tears. A like event happened to ancient Israel on her exodus from 



500 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Egypt. The time of trial as to whether an entrance should be min- 
istered into the land of promise closed at her first approach to the 
borders of Palestine ; closed when the Lord sware in his wrath that 
she should not enter into that rest. A like event may happen in the 
moral and spiritual history of any man. God's Spirit will not always 
strive with ours. The time may come when the awful words will pass 
froin the lips of the righteous Judge, " Ephraim is joined to his idols, 
let him alone ;" — and Providence will let the man alone ; and the 
Word of God will let the man alone; and his own conscience 
will let the man alone ; and the Spirit of all grace will let the man 
alone. It is not for us to usurp the prerogative of the Omniscient. 
It is not for us to affirm of any one, let his character and conduct be 
what they may, that he has reached or passed the mysterious point 
beyond which that comes true. It is not for any one to pass such 
sentence upon himself. But let all of us stand upon our guard, and 
reflect that if for months or years we have been growing coldei, 
deader, more indifferent to spiritual things, to the unseen and eternal 
realities ; if conscience has been gradually losing her hold and weak- 
ening in her power; if we can listen now unmoved to what once 
would have impressed and affected us ; if we court and dally with 
temptations that once we would have shunned ; if sins are lightly 
committed which once we would have shrunk from ; by these and 
such like marks, it is apparent that our day of grace has been declin- 
ing, the shadows of its evening have been lengthening out, and that 
if no change occur, if this course of things go on long, ere the sun of 
our natural existence go down, the sun of our spiritual day may have 
set, never to rise again. 






II. 

The Fig-tree withering Away — The (Second Cleans- 
ing of the Temple.* 

MONDAY. 

Speaking generally of the days and nights of the memorable week 
which preceded his crucifixion, St. Luke tells us that Jesus "in the 
daytime was teaching in the temple, and at night he went out and 
abode in the mount that is called the Mount of Olives." Luke 21 :37 
The other evangelists speak of his going out at eventide to Bethany, 
to lodge there. Some of the nights may have been spent in the village 
* Matt. 21 : 12-17 ; Mark 11 : 12-19 ; Luke 19 : 45-48 ; John 12 : 19. 



THE FIG-TREE WITHERING AWAI. 501 

home ; some outside in the olive gardens. If the night which succeed- 
ed his triumphal entry into the city was spent in the latter way, it may 
have been in solitude, in sleeplessness, in fasting, and in prayer, that 
its silent watches passed. And this would explain to us the circum- 
stance, otherwise obscure, that next morning as he returned into the 
;ity Jesus was hungry. In this condition, he saw at some distance 
before him, by the wayside, a fig-tree covered with leaves. It is the 
peculiar nature of this tree that ordinarily its fruit appears before its 
leaves. Showing, as it did, such profusion of leaf, the fig-tree on 
which the eye of Jesus rested should have had some fruit hanging on 
its branches. But when he came up to it, it had none. Was Christ 
then deceived and disappointed? Did he not know before he ap- 
proached the tree that no fruit would be found upon it? If he did 
know, should he have appeared to cherish an expectation which he 
did not really entertain? In answer to these and many kindred 
questions which may be raised regarding the incident, it is enough to 
say that in his whole dealing with the fig-tree by the wayside, Jesus 
meant, not to speak, but to enact a parable. In such acting, the 
letter may, and in many instances must be false, that the spirit and 
meaning may be truly and fully exhibited. Here is a tree which by 
its show of leaves gives promise that it has fruit upon it. Nay more, 
here is a tree which steps out in advance of all its fellows — for the 
time of figs, the ordinary season for that fruit ripening in the neigh- 
borhood of Jerusalem, has not yet come ; here is a tree which, by the 
very prematureness and advanced condition of its foliage, tempts the 
traveller to believe that he will find there the first ripe figs of the sea- 
son. It is as an ordinary traveller that Jesus approaches it, and when 
he finds that it has by its barrenness not only sinned against the laws 
of its species, and failed to profit by the advantages it has enjoyed, but 
in its early foliage made such a boastful and deceitful show of prece- 
dence and superiority above its neighbors, he seizes upon it as one of 
the fittest emblems he can find of that land and people so highly 
favored, for which the Great Husbandman had done so much which 
had set itself out before all other lands and peoples, and made so 
large yet so deceitful a profession of allegiance to the Most High. 
In his treatment of this tree, Jesus would symbolize and shadow forth 
the doom that the making and the falsifying of these professions has 
drawn down upon Israel. It was in mercy that in dumb prophetic 
diow he chose to represent this doom in a calamity visited upon a 
.senseless tree rather than upon a human agent. He might have 
taken one or more of the men of whom this tree was but a type, 
and in some terrible catastrophe inflicted upon them have prefigured 



5U2 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

the fate of their countrymen. Or he might, as he had done not 
long before, when pointing to the heavy judgments impending 
over Judea, have taken actual instances of human suffering, such as 
that of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their 
sacrifices, or of the eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, 
and employed them as emblems of the like destruction in reserve 
for the impenitent. Upon the very occasion now alluded to, when 
the first hint or obscure prophecy was given of the kind of ruin com- 
ing upon Judea, he had spoken a parable in which he had used a 
fig-tree as an emblem of Israel — a fruitless fig-tree, for which a 
period of respite had been solicited and obtained, for which year 
after year everything had been done, by digging about it and dung- 
ing it, that skill and care could suggest. That parable, however, 
had stopped at a very critical point. The intercession had pre- 
vailed. The barren fig-tree was to be allowed to stand, another 
year of trial was to be given to it. "We may assume that all which 
the dresser of the vineyard promised would be done ; but the issue is 
not revealed. The curtain drops as the fourth year begins. "What 
happened at its close is left uncertain. After all this care and cul- 
ture the barren fig-tree might remain barren still, and the sentence, 
''Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?" come to be executed 
upon it. Whether it was actually to be so or not the parable did 
not reveal. But now this actual fig-tree of the wayside, found so full 
of leaf though so empty of fruit, is taken, even as the fig-tree of the 
parable to represent impenitent Israel, and in his treatment of it 
Jesus takes up, carries on, and completes the parable, telling what 
it left untold. Looking at Christ's act and deed in this light, as at 
once symbolic and prophetic, as stretching in its significance beyond 
ancient Israel, and embracing an exhibition of the result of pro- 
fession without practice, show without substance in religion, let us 
ask ourselves upon what ground was it that our Lord's cursing of 
the tree was grounded, and in what did that curse consist? 

The tree is condemned solely for its barrenness. It is not said 
Of it that it showed a sickly, dwarfed, or stunted growth. It may 
have stood as fair and goodly a tree to look upon as any fig-tree 
around Jerusalem, offering as inviting an object to the traveller's eye, 
furnishing in outspread branches and broad green leaves as refresh- 
ing a shade. But whatever its other qualities, either for use or for 
ornament, it wanted this one — it did not bear fruit. That was -its 
fatal defect, and for that one defect the blighting words were spoken 
against it, and it died. The tree had failed in its first and highest 
office. A fig-tree is created that it may bear figs. That is its peeu- 



THE BARREN FIG-TREE. 503 

liar function in the physical creation, and if it fail in performing this 
function, it forfeits its place in that creation, it incurs the penalty of 
removal, it may righteously be treated as a cumberer of the earth. 
We men have been created that, by being, doing, enduring what God 
requires us to be and to do and to endure, we may bear some fruit 
unto him, some fruit of that land which can be laid up in the eternal 
garner. That is our allotted function in the spiritual creation, and 
if it remain undischarged, then by us also is our place in that crea- 
tion forfeited. In our natural barrenness and unfruitfulness towards 
God a gracious intercessor has been found ; by him for us a period of 
respite has been obtained, a period in which many a gracious minis- 
try of his providence and Spirit is operating upon us. Long and 
sadly may we have failed in fulfilling the great end of our creation, 
yet if we will but yield ourselves to these kindly and gracious influ- 
ences that the Eedeemer of our souls is so ready to exert, the place 
that we had forfeited may still be ours, seasons of richer fruitfulnoss 
may be before us on earth, and a long summer- tide of endless joy 
beyond. But if we fail, if we resist these influences, if we still 
remain barren before God, it will avail us little that we plead the 
harmlessness of our lives, the gentleness, the goodness, the generos- 
ity of our dispositions and conduct towards our fellow-men. Like 
the barren fig-tree of the wayside we stand, with much, it may be, of 
beauty, much of outward show, many an amiable quality in us to win 
human love, not without use either, contributing largely to the 
happiness of others, but barren towards God, fruitless in the eye of 
Christ, open to the doom that we may force him to pronounce and 
execute. 

And what is that doom, as shadowed forth in the symbolic inci- 
dent that we have now before us? Jesus does nothing to the barreu 
fig-tree. No outward ministry of wrath is here employed ; no axe is 
laid at the root of the tree ; no whirlwind blast from the wilderness 
strips it of its leaves; no lightning-stroke from heaven is commis- 
sioned to split its solid trunk, and scorch and wither up its fruitless 
branches. The doom pronounced is simply this: "Let no man eat 
fruit of thee hereafter for ever." The curse laid upon it was that of 
perpetual barrenness. For the execution of that curse it was not 
necessary that any kind of violence should be done to it; but it was 
physically necessary that a&l those material agencies needed to make 
it a fruit-bearing tree, which had so long and so unavailing been 
operating, should now cea^e to act. This actually takes place. The 
sentence passes from the lips of Jesus : "Let no fruit grow on thee 
hencefojward for ever." His ministering servants hear and hasten 



504 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

to carry the sentence into execution. The earth hears and yields no 
more nourishment to those roots; light and air, they hear and with- 
hold from them their genial influences ; the rain may fall, the dew 
may settle upon those branches, but not to recruit or re-invigorate. 
It had not profited by them as it should, and now there is taken 
away from it even that which it had. Poor solitary forsaken tree, 
cut off by that fiat of heaven from all the supports of life and growth ! 
See how from that moment the glossy green of the spring leaves 
grows dull; the branches begin to droop; the bark to crack; the 
whole tree to shrink and shrivel up, till next morning the passers-by 
see it dried up from the very roots ! 

And should the great Creator desire to deal with any barren 
human spirit as he dealt with that barren fig-tree, what has he to do 
in order to punish it for its barrenness ? He does not need to come * 
forth out of his place to avenge the injury done to his great name. 
He does not need to grasp any instrument of vengeance, or inflict 
with it a single stroke ; no bolt of wrath need be hurled from above, 
nor any hell from beneath be moved to draw the guilty spirit down 
into its eddying fires. No ; all that God has to do is simply to pass 
the same doom executed upon the fig-tree. He has but to desert 
that spirit, to say, " Arise, let us go hence," and call away after him 
as he goes all those powers and influences that had been at work 
there so long and so fruitlessly, to leave it so absolutely and wholly, 
finally and for ever, to itself. Poor solitary forsaken spirit, cut off 
from God, and cast adrift upon a wild and shoreless sea, with thine 
own vulture passions in thee, let loose from all restraint, to turn upon 
thee and torture thee, and prey upon thee for ever ! What darker, 
drearier hell than that? The soul breeding within it the worm that 
never dies ; itself kindling the fire it cannot quench. 

The sentence against the fig-tree pronounced, the elements having 
got from their Creator the commission to execute it, which they were 
not slow to do, Jesus passes on into the city and up into the temple. 
He had on the preceding evening merely looked around on all that 
was to be seen. It was the day (the tenth of the month Nisan) on 
which, according to the old command, the Jews were solemnly to set 
apart the paschal lamb for the coming sacrifice. And Christ's object 
may then have simply been to present himseli as the true Lamb of 
God, set apart from the beginning, who four days thereafter was to 
offer up himself in the sacrifice of the cross. At the time of that 
short evening visit all may have been comparatively quiet within the 
temple. But now, as at an early hour he enters the court of the 
Gentiles, the same sights are before him that met his eyes and stirred 



THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE. 505 

his spirit three years before : the bustle of a great traffic, of buyers 
and sellers, and money-changers, all busily engaged. In reproof of 
such desecration, in assertion of his divine dignity and power as the 
Son coming to his Father's house, with full authority to dispose of 
all things there as he pleased, he had at the beginning of his minis- 
try cleansed the temple, cast out the traffickers, overturned the 
tables: of the money-changers — with little or no effect as it would 
seem, for now all the abuses are restored. The hand of the cleansei 
is as much needed as ever, and it is once more put forth as vigor- 
ously, perhaps more so than before, for we detect increase of stern- 
ness both in word and deed on this occasion. But why the repetition 
of the act? Why begin and close the ministry in Jerusalem with 
such cleansing of the temple? Though we could give no other 
answer to such a question, we should be satisfied with regarding this 
as one of the many instances in which Jesus repeated himself as he 
did both in speech and in action. He knew the nature on which he 
desired to operate. He knew how difficult it is to fix even the sim- 
plest ideas, not connected with the outward world of sense and action, 
in the minds and hearts of the great mass of mankind. He knew 
that however good the instruments might be that are used to do this, 
(and he chose the simplest and the best,) to make the impression 
deep and lasting the stroke must be oft repeated; the same truth 
told in the same words, or illustrated by the same emblems, or symbol- 
ized by the same acts. In the gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark 
more than a dozen instances occur of the same discourses redelivered 
with scarcely any variation in the phraseology ; and we may war- 
rantably conclude that this happened far more frequently in the actual 
ministry of Jesus than now appears upon the face of the record. It 
was the same with the miracles as with the teachings of our Saviour. 
Twice he fed many thousands on the hillside, and twice upon the 
lake miraculous draughts of fishes were taken. It was in harmony 
with the method thus so often followed, that at the commencement 
and at the close of his labors in Judea, within the courts of the tem- 
ple, in presence of the priests and the rulers, he asserted by a bold 
and authoritative act his prophetic and Messianic character, his true 
and proper Sonship to the Father. In the latter case we can see a 
peculiar propriety in his having done so. The day before, he had 
made his appeal to the people. In language borrowed from ancient 
prophecy, and known by all to apply to Christ their coming king, 
they had hailed him as their Messiah, and in his acceptance of their 
homage he had publicly appropriated to himself the Messianic office. 
It remained that he should make a like appeal to the priesthood. 



506 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

calling on them to recognize him as holding that high office. He did 
so the next day in the temple. It was the first thing he did on enter- 
ing the holy place. This was the way in which he began that brief 
ministry within its courts, in which his earthly labors were to close. 
He knew beforehand how fruitless it would be; but nevertheless the 
lign and token of who it was that was among them must be given. 

The second cleansing of the courts of the temple appears to have 
taken the custodians of the holy place as much by surprise as did the 
first. They made no attempt to interrupt it, nor did they interfere 
with Jesus in the use to which he turned the courts that he had 
cleansed. For he did not retire after the purification was accom- 
plished. He remained to keep guard over the place from which the 
defilement had been removed, not suffering any man to carry even a 
common vessel across the court, which the Jews had turned into a 
common city thoroughfare. He remained for hours to occupy it un- 
challenged ; the people flocked into it, and he taught them there. 
They were all, we are told, very attentive to hear him, and they 
were astonished at his doctrine — the citizens who had never heard 
him teach so before, and the Galileans, to whom the doctrine indeed 
was not new, but who wondered afresh to hear it spoken under the 
shadow of the holy place. And the teaching had its usual accompani- 
ment : " The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he 
healed them" there. Matt. 21:14. He had wrought many miracles 
before in Jerusalem, but never here and thus ; never within the walls 
of the sanctuary; never in such a public and solemn manner, as 
direct attestations of his asserted kingly dignity and power. For 
hours he had the large outer court of the Gentiles at his command, 
and this was the manner in which the time and the place were em- 
ployed. What a change from the morning to the forenoon occupa- 
tion; from the crowding, and the jostling, and the bargaining, and 
the driving to and fro of cattle, to the silent multitude hanging upon 
the lips of the great Speaker, or watching as one and another of the 
lame and the blind are brought to him to be healed ! But where all 
this while are the priests and the Levites, the rulers and the temple 
guard ? They are looking on bewildered, their earlier antipathy kin- 
dled into a tenfold fervor of hate. The closer to them he comes, the 
more distinctively and forcibly he presses upon them the evidences 
of his Messiahship, it convinces them the more what a dangerous 
man he is, how utterly impossible it is that he can be any longer 
tolerated or suffered to act in such a bold, presumptuous, defiant 
style, the resolution they had already formed to destroy him taking 
sinner hold of them than ever. For the moment, however, they fear 



THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE. 607 

both hiin and the people: Mark 11:18; Luke 19:48; his conduct in 
braving them within their own stronghold is so unlike anything that 
they had ever fancied he would dare to do, the current of popular 
k eliug runs so strongly in his favor. Not that there was much out 
« Ard demonstration of this feeling. It had expended itself the day 
before in the triumphal procession without the city gates, where all 
felt more at liberty. Within the area of the temple, and under those 
searching, frowning looks of the scribes and the chief priests, the 
breath of the people is abated. Thinking of the strange tears and 
lamentations over the capital, of all they see and hear within the 
temple, something of doubt and uncertainty, of awe and fear, has 
been stealing over the spirits of the ignorant multitude, which re 
strains them from any marked or vehement expressions of attach- 
ment. But there are little children among them who had takeu 
part in yesterday's procession, within whose ears its hosannas are 
still ringing. These feel no such restraint, and in the joyous ardor 
of the hour and scene, they lift up their voices and fill the courts of 
the temple with the cry, "Hosanna to the Son of David." This is 
more than the chief priests and scribes can bear. In their dis- 
pleasure they appeal to Christ himself, saying, " Hearest thou what 
they say?" wishing him, as their allies had done the day before, 
to stop praises, in their ears so profane, so blasphemous. All the 
answer that they get is a sentence applicable to all praise that comes 
from the lips of childhood, cited from a psalm which is through- 
out a prophecy of himself, a proclamation of the excellency of his 
name and kingdom over all the earth: "Have ye never read, Out of 
the mouths of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise ?" 
Pleasant ever to the eye of Jesus was childhood with its charm of 
freshness, simplicity, buoyant freedom and open ardent love and 
trust, and sweet ever to his ear the strains of juvenile devotion, but 
never so pleasant as when he saw these bands of children clustering 
round him in the temple; never so sweet as when — no others left to 
do it — they lifted up their youthful voices in those hosannas, the last 
accents of earthly praise that fell upon his ear. 

At the rebuke and the quotation, the baffled scribes and high 
priests retire, to do no more that day in the way of interruption ; 
retire to mature their plans, to wait for the morrow, and see what it 
will bring forth. So closed the last day but one of the active minis 
fcry of Jesus. 



507a THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 



Tuesday of Passion Week has been called the Day of Conflict, 
because it is the one in which Christ is especially engaged in controversy 
with the Jewish authorities in the form of a series of questions, prob- 
lems, and entangling arguments presented to him in the temple. It is 
followed by Wednesday, a Day of Retirement, probably at Bethany, 
about which the Gospels give practically no record. 

As Jesus and the Apostles were on their way from Bethany to 
Jerusalem on the morning of Tuesday they came upon the barren fig- 
tree, and Peter and the others saw that it was " dried up from the roots." 
The lesson which Jesus drew from it was that of having faith in God. 

When they arrive in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes 
and the elders come with the challenging question as to the authority 
with which Christ performs such acts — perhaps referring to his cleans- 
ing the temple. Jesus presents the counter-question as to whether the 
baptism of John was from heaven or of men. Unwilling to accept 
either horn of the dilemma, they reply that they cannot tell, which 
answer enables Christ to say, " Neither tell I you by what authority 
I do these things." He then gives three parables of warning. 

The Pharisees, having been discomfited, seek the help of the 
Herodians, and they come with the question as to the lawfulness of 
paying tribute to Csesar, that is, the Roman government. Jesus asks 
them to show him a penny or denarius, and then inquires whose image 
and superscription it bears. 

Once more Christ is victor. The Sadducees now take their turn, 
and bring forward a puzzling and ridiculous problem relating to the 
resurrection, which Christ easily disposes of. 

Lastly, a scribe or lawyer, apparently with no such evil intent 
as the others, inquires as to the greatest or first commandment, and 
our Lord gives the memorable summary enjoining love to God and man. 

Lifting up once more the test, " What think ye of Christ? whose 
son is he? " Jesus enters upon his denunciation and condemnation of 
the scribes and Pharisees, that he may deliver the people, and espe- 
cially his followers, from being longer misled by these blind guides. 

Jesus now passes into the Court of the Women and sees the poor 
widow casting two mites into the treasury and commends her. 

The last occurrence in the temple on this eventful day is prophetic 
— the desire of certain Greeks to see him, and the turning of his thought 
to the great law that only through sacrifice and the cross will all men 
be drawn to him. 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 5076 

PART IV. PASSION WEEK TO GETHSEMANE. 
Study 17. Days of Conflict and Retirement. 

(1) The Twelve perceive that the fig-tree is withered away 508 

(2) Christ finds lessons of faith, prayer, and forgiveness 508-510 

(o) Challenge of Christ's authority 510-512 

a. Sanhedrim has met 510 

b. Deputation challenges Christ's authority 510, 511 

c. He asks them concerning John's baptism 512 

d. They refuse to answer and Christ also refuses 512 

(4) Three Parables of Warning 513-518 

a. Parable of the Two Sons 513 

b. Point of its application to the leaders 513 

c. Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen 513, 514 

d. Verdict of the people 514 

e. Further figure of judgment through the stone rejected by the 

builders 514, 515 

/. Parable of the Marriage of the King's Son 516-518 

g. Wrath and plotting of Christ's foes 518, 519 

(5) Question as to paying tribute 519-525 

a. Presented by the Herodians 519 

6. Views of different parties 519, 520 

c. The question submitted, and Christ's method of reply 520, 521 

d. Applications of the principle 521-525 

(6) Ideas and motives of the Sadducees 526-533 

a. They were political materialists 526, 527 

b. Disregarded Jesus till he stirred Jerusalem 527, 528 

c. Their question concerning marriage and the resurrection 529 

d. Jesus' answer 529-533 

(7) Lawyer's question and Christ's answer 534-537 

a. The man seems to be sincere in his inquiry 534 

b. " Which is the first of the commandments? " 534 

c. Christ's emphasis upon love . 534-536 

d. The scribe's appreciative response 536, 537 

(8) Christ's counter-question 537-540 

a. The Messiah is David's son 538 

b. How then is he also David's Lord? 538-540 

(9) Woes uttered concerning the Pharisees 541-547 

a. Contrast in the position of Christ and his adversaries 541 

6. Definite purpose in their denunciation 542 

c. The deep-seated evil of Pharisaism 542 

d. Christ's twofold character as Saviour and Judge 545-547 

(10) The widow giving two mites 547-550 

a. Jesus passes into the Court of the Women 547 

b. He notes the gift of the poor widow 547, 548 

c. He commends her gift above others because of its motive 548-550 

(11) The Greeks desiring to see Jesus 550-556 

a. Christ told of their desire by Andrew and Philip 550, 551 

b. The effect upon Jesus' thought 552 

c. Glorified by sacrifice and suffering for others 553, 554 

d. His sense of soul trouble and the Father's voice of approval .... 554, 555 

e. The magnet of the cross 555, 556 



50b THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 






in 

The Barren Fig-tree — Parables of the Two $6hs 

AND OF THE WlCKED HuSBANDMEN,* 

TUESDAY. 

It was early on the morning of Monday, the second day of the 
Passion week, that Jesus pronounced the doom upon the fig-tree. 
The sentence took immediate effect: "Presently the fig-tree withered 
away." Matt. 21 : 19. The withering, however, was not so instan- 
taneous and complete as to attract at the moment the attention 
of the disciples, or the shades of evening may have wrapped the 
tree from their sight as they went out to the Mount of Olives. 
Next morning, however, returning into the city by the same path 
they had taken the day before, they came to the tree, looked at 
it, and saw that it was "dried up from the roots." Mark 11:20. 
Jesus himself seems scarcely to notice it, is about to pass it by. 
The ready spokesman, Peter, calls his attention to it, and says, 
" Master, behold, the fig-tree which thou cursedst is withered away.'" 
Ifc is simple wonder, and nothing more; wonder at the power by 
which such an effect had been accomplished, which breaks out in 
this expression of the apostle. And he is the faithful represen- 
tative of the state of feeling in the breasts of his brethren. The} 
manifest no curiosity, at least make no inquiry as to the spir- 
itual meaning of the incident. Their thoughts are engrossed witb 
the singularity of the occurrence, that by a simple word spoken, 
without any external agency employed, so large a tree, in full leaf, 
should, within twenty-four hours, have shrunk up from its very roots, 
and should now stand before them a leafless, shrivelled, lifeless thing. 
Had they been in a different frame of mind, had they been wonder- 
ing, not how, but why so strange a thing was done, Jesus might 
have spoken to them otherwise than he did. As it was, he gra- 
ciously accommodates himself to the existing condition of their 
thoughts, by letting them know that his word had been a word of 
power, because a word of strong undoubting faith, such faith as they 
themselves might cherish. "And Jesus answering, saith unto them, 
Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, that whosoever shall 
say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the 
sea ; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe ; it shall be 
done." In the early days of Christianity, the faith of the apostles 
° Mark 11 : 20-33 ; 12 : 1-12 : Matt. 21 : 23-46 : Luke 20 : 1--19. 



THE BARREN FIG-TREE. 509 

was authorized and encouraged to take hold of the omnipotence of 
the Deity, and through it to work miracles. This kind of faith, in 
its absolute and perfect form, existed only in our Lord himself. To 
the power itself by which the miracles were to be wrought there was 
absolutely no limit, as there was none to that omnipotence which 
the faith was to appropriate and employ. But in actual exercise the 
power was to be proportioned to the faith. It was to be according 
to their faith that it was to be done by them, as well as in them. 
We accept it then as true to its whole extent, that at that time, and 
as to these men, there was no miracle of power needful or useful for 
the furtherance of their apostolic work, which their faith, had it 
been perfect, might not have enabled them to accomplish. Of course 
we understand that that would not have been a true or intelligent 
faith in God which desired simply to make trial of its strength, 
independently of the purpose for which the power was exercised. 
We put aside, therefore, as quite frivolous and out of place, such a 
question as this : Could St. Peter or St. Paul, when their faith was 
strongest, have cast a mountain into the sea, or plucked up a 
sycamore-tree by the roots? Whatever God saw w T as meet to be 
done, the power to do that was given; and so to the very shadow 
of the one, and to part of the dress of the other, a wonderful efficacy 
was once attached. But they and all these early Christians were to 
know that the gift of working wonders, which sat for a season like a 
crown of glory upon the brow of the infant church, was not to be 
idly and indiscriminately employed, and was ever to be reckoned as 
of inferior value in God's sight to those inward graces of the soul, in 
which true likeness to and fellowship with God consist. Thus it is 
that from speaking of faith as putting itself forth in the working ol 
miracles, Jesus proceeds to speak of it as expressing the desires of 
the heart to God in prayer : "Therefore I say unto you, What things 
soever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye 
shall have them." "And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have 
aught against any ; that your Father also which is in heaven may for- 
give you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, neither will your 
Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses." The last words 
are the same that he had used in the Sermon on the Mount. Com- 
paring the two cases, however, there is something more striking in 
the parallel than the simple repetition of the same words. It was 
after his having spoken for the first time the prayer that goes by his 
name, that at the close — as if the one petition, "Forgive us our 
debts, as we forgive our debtors," had been dwelling upon his mind, 
and he desired to recur to it, so as to press home upon their hearts 



510 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

tlie duty of forgiving others — that before passing on to another sub- 
ject of his discourse, he said: "For if ye forgive men their tres- 
passes, your heavenly Father will also forgive you : but if ye 
forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive 
Tour tiespasses." Matt. 6 : 14, 15. So is it here. He cannot speak 
of the large and limitless influence of prayer without recurring to 
the same idea, expressing and enforcing it in the same words. Why 
have the two — our forgiving others, and being ourselves forgiven — 
been linked thus together in such close and singular conjunction? 
Not that there is any other ground of the divine forgiveness than the 
free mercy of our God in Christ ; not that by pardoning others we 
purchase the pardon of Jehovah ; but that the connection be- 
tween the two is so constant, fixed, invariable, that neither can you 
ever find the humble, broken, contrite heart, which sues for mercy 
at the throne of grace, without finding there also the meek and 
gentle spirit that goes forth forgivingly towards others ; nor do you 
ever meet with such free, full, generous forgiveness of others, as from 
those who have themselves partaken of the pardoning grace of God. 
He who has been forgiven that great debt, the ten thousand talents, 
how can he refuse to forgive the hundred pence ? 

The words about forgiveness were spoken in the presence of the 
withered fig-tree. The same mysterious power, which had in this 
one instance been put forth to blast and to destroy, was to be con- 
veyed to the disciples. May it not in part have been to warn them 
that it was in no wrathful spirit, for no malignant or destructive 
purposes, that it was to be wielded by them — that in such emphatic 
terms they were reminded that it must ever be in a meek forgiving 
spirit that they should sue for the aid of the heavenly power ? 

The short conversation by the wayside over the walk into the 
city is resumed, and the temple courts are reached, already filled, 
though it was yet early, with eager expectant crowds. Before 
beginning his work of teaching and of healing, Jesus is walking 
leisurely through the courts, calmly surveying all around, looking 
perhaps, to see what effect his act of the preceding day has had in 
the way of removing the profanations of the place. 

The Sanhedrim has met, a consultation has been held, it has 
been resolved that as a preliminary step he shall be challenged, and 
forced to produce and authenticate his credentials. 

"As he was walking in the temple, there came to him the chief 
priests and the scribes and the elders;" the three great bodies out 
of whom the highest council of the Jews was constituted. It is a 
formal deputation, in all likelihood, from this council, which now 



THE CHALLENGE. 511 

approaches and accosts him. Their question seems a fit and fair 
one. Thej are the constituted keepers of the temple, of the only 
public building of the city that the Romans have left entirely under 
Jewish control. There has been a manifest invasion of the territory 
committed to their guardianship, of the offices that they alone are 
held competent to discharge; for who is this that, being neither 
priest nor Levite, nor scribe nor elder, deals with the sacred place 
as if it were his own ? Nothing at first sight more proper or perti- 
nent than that they should come to one acting in such a way as 
Jesus had done the day before, and say to him, " By what authority 
doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority?" We 
remember, however, that three years before Jesus had acted in the 
same way within the precincts of the temple, and that the same men 
had then accosted him in the same manner. Their question then 
indeed had been somewhat different from what it is now: " What 
sign showest thou, seeing thou doest these things ?" Since then, sign 
after sign had been given, miracle after miracle had been wrought, 
proof after proof of his Messiahship had been presented. They had 
refused to listen and be convinced; had turned all the multiplied evi- 
dence aside, and dealt with it as if it were of no weight. And now, 
at the close of a period teeming throughout with answers to theii 
first challenge, they addressed him as if for the first time the ques- 
tion as to what and who he was had to be raised. They do not, 
indeed, now ask for signs; they must have other vouchers. They 
must probe to the bottom the pretensions of this bold invader of their 
temple, and draw out from him what they fondly hope will give them 
sufficient ground legally to condemn him. They frame their queries 
well. They first ask about the authority under which he acts. 
They know that no authority but one, that of God himself, could 
sanction the procedure of the Galilean. He may plead that author- 
ity; but his own bare claiming it will not suffice — he must display 
his title to the possession of this authority, must tell who gave it to 
him. Looking at the motives by which they were actuated and the 
sinister objects they had in view — considering, too, how full and 
varied were the materials already in their hands for answering their 
inquiry, Jesus might have kept silence and refused to answer, He 
does not do this: he gives indeed no direct or categorical reply; 
but it would be wrong to say that he cleverly or artfully evades the 
question they put to him by asking them another upon a quite differ 
ent subject ; that he suspends his reply to them on theirs to his, sc 
that, out of their refusal to answer, he may construct a defence 
of his own silence. It was not as a mere evasion of a captious 



512 THE LIFE OP CHRIST. 

challenge, as a mere method of stopping the mouths of the chal- 
lengers, that "Jesus answered and said unto them, I will also ask you 
one question, and answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I 
do these things: The baptism of John, was it from heaven? or of 
men? answer me." Jesus refers to the baptism of John as contain- 
ing within itself a sufficient reply to their inquiries. If they acknowl- 
edged it as divine, they must also recognize his authority as divine ; 
for John had openly and repeatedly pointed to him as the Messiah, 
the greater than he, whose shoe-latchet he was not worthy to 
unloose. First, then, he must have from them a confession as to 
the true character of the Baptist's ministry. This they are unpre- 
pared to give. Though really and in their hearts rejecting it, they 
had never openly discredited John's claim to be a prophet sent by 
God. They had managed to keep the people in ignorance of what 
they thought. They had not needed to interfere to check the career 
of the Baptist. Herod had done their work for them in his case. 
John had been removed, and they were willing enough it should be 
thought that they participated in the popular belief. They felt at 
once the difficulty of the dilemma in which the question of Jesus 
involved them. Should they say, as was naturally to be expected 
they should, that John's baptism was from heaven, Jesus would 
have it in his power to say, f Why then did ye not believe him when 
he testified of me ? If he was from heaven then so am I, my min- 
istry and his being so wrapped together, that together they stand or 
together they fall.' Such was the instant use to which Jesus could 
turn a present acknowledgment on their part of the divine origin 
and authority of the Baptist's ministry, convicting them at once of 
the plainest and grossest inconsistency. They were not prepared to 
stand convicted of this in presence of the people, now stirred to 
intense anxiety as they watched the progress of this collision. But 
as little were they prepared to face the storm that they would 
raise by an open denial of the heavenly origin of the Baptist's 
mission; and so to Christ's pointed interrogation, their only answer, 
after reasoning among themselves, is, "We cannot tell." It wao 
false ; they could at least have told what they themselves believed. 
They could, but dared not; and so by this piece of cowardice and 
hypocrisy they forfeit the title to have any other or fuller satisfaction 
given them as to the nature and origin of that authority which 
Jesus exercised, beyond that which was already in their hands. 
"And Jesus answering saith unto them, Neither do I tell you by 
what authority I do these things." Mark 11 : 33. 

Scarcely prepared for having the tables turned so quickly and 



PARABLE OF THE TWO SONS. 513 

thoroughly upon them, ilie scribes and chief priests and elders 
stand crestfallen before the Lord. He has them now in hand, nor 
will he lose the last opportunity of telling them what they are, 
and what he knows they have resolved to do. About to pronounce 
over them his fearful anathemas, when all the word-battles of this 
troubled day are over, he will force them now beforehand to spread 
out with their own hands the grounds upon which those anathemas 
were to rest. Out of their own mouths will he condemn them. This 
is done by a skilful use of parable ; the same kind of use that 
Nathan made of it when he got David to judge and condemn his 
own conduct. "But what think ye?" says Jesus to them, as if ho 
were introducing a wholly new topic: "A certain man had two sons; 
and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to-day in my 
vineyard. He answered and said, I will not; but afterwards he 
repented, and went. He came to the second, and said likewise ; and 
he answered and said, I go, sir; but went not. Whether of them 
twain did the will of his father?" Little suspecting the real drift of 
this short and simple story, and rather relieved than otherwise by the 
question, as getting them out of their embarrassment and covering 
their fall, they say unto him at once, "The first;" the one who said 
he would not, yet who went. Then came the moral and applica- 
tion of the tale: "Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the 
harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came 
unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not ; but 
the publicans and the harlots believed him : and ye, when ye had 
seen it, repented not afterward that ye might believe him." It was 
the treatment given to John and to his ministry that Jesus had been 
setting forth in the conduct of the two sons to their father. They, 
the chief priests and elders of the people, were the second son; 
and those publicans and harlots, who repented at the preaching of 
the Baptist, were the first. It was bad enough to ha^e the veil of 
hypocrisy behind which they had tried to screen themselves torn 
aside; to have their unbelief in the Baptist proclaimed upon the 
housetops. It was worse to have publicans and hailots preferred 
before them, the preference grounded upon their own verdict. But 
they have still more to hed,r, still more to bear. Jesus had been 
comparing them, to their great chagrin, with some of the lowest of 
their own times. His eye now takes a wider range. He looks back 
to the treatment which these men's forefathers had given to messen- 
ger after messenger of the Most High, and he looks forward to that 
which they, fit sons of such sires, were about to give himself; and 
bringing the past, the present, and the future into the picture, he 

UtoofOhrtit 33 



514 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

tells of a vineyard well fenced, well furnished, let out to husband- 
men; of servant after servant sent to receive its fruits; of one of 
thern being beaten, another stoned, another killed, till the owner of 
the vineyard having "one son, his well beloved," at last sends him, 
saying, "They will reverence my son." But the wicked husbandmen, 
ivhen he comes, take and kill him, and cast him out of the vineyard, 
"What then," says Jesus, "shall the lord of the vineyard, when he 
cometh, do unto those husbandmen?" This question is addressed to 
the people, and not to the chief priests and scribes, to whom, as St. 
Luke (chap. 20:9) tells us, the parable was spoken; and they, not 
looking perhaps beyond the simple incidents of the tale, say, "He will 
come and destroy the husbandmen, and will give the vineyard to 
others." But why are the chief priests and the elders forced, as unwill- 
ingly they are, to remain standing there in Christ's presence with a 
great crowd around them? what are they thinking of this second 
story? what will they now say? Scarcely has Christ begun to speak 
of the vineyard and its fence, and its wine-press, ere Isaiah's vine- 
yard — a type, they knew, of the house of Israel — recurs to their mem- 
ory; and as messenger after messenger is spoken of as despatched, 
what could those be but the prophets whom the Lord had sent unto 
their forefathers ? Already a strong suspicion that this tale also is 
to be brought to bear against them has entered into their minds — a 
suspicion that is turned into a certainty as Christ proceeds to speak 
of the owner of the vineyard as a father having an only and well- 
beloved son, just such a son as Jesus had always claimed to be to 
God, and as he went on to represent the seizure and the death of 
that son, the very deed they already had resolved to do. In these 
husbandmen they see themselves; in their doom, whatever it may 
be, they see their own. 

"While the people, then, in ready answer to Christ's question, 
speak out the natural verdict of the unbiased conscience, and say, 
"He will destroy the husbandmen, and give the vineyard unto others," 
they, as they hear such a heavy sentence passed, almost involuntarily 
exclaim, "God forbid." Jesus looks at them as they utter this vehe- 
ment disclaimer, and says : "What is this then that is written? Did 
ye never read in the Scriptures, The stone which the builders 
rejected, the same is become the head of the corner : this is the 
Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?" Christ quotes here 
from the 118th Psalm, a psalm familiar to the Jews as pointing 
throughout to their Messiah; so familiar, that it was from it that 
those salutations were taken by which Christ on his entry into the 
city had been hailed by the common people two days before, as well 



THE CORNKE-STONE. 515 

as those liosannas to the Son of David which the children had 
repeated the next day in the temple, the echoes of which must still 
have been ringing somewhat unpleasantly in the ears of the chief 
priests and the rulers. Jesus wishes by this quotation to carry on 
as it were the prophecy of the parable; to show what would be the 
loom inflicted upon the perpetrators of that dark deed, the minder 
of the Father's only and well-beloved Son. That Son was to be 
himself the inflicter of this doom; but as he in the parable was dead, 
etnd could not be represented as a living agent, the image of the 
vineyard is dropped, and another is introduced, fitting in however 
with the other, the rejecters of the stone being the same with the 
husbandmen of the vineyard. The chief priests might have some 
little difficulty in seeing how it was that in speaking about the cor- 
ner-stone Jesus was but carrying on the same history a step or two 
beyond the point at which the parable, by the necessity of its struc- 
ture, had stopped. Any such difficulty was at once removed by 
Christ's dropping for a moment all allegory, all imagery: "Therefore 
I say unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and 
given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." Matt. 21 : 43. 
They can mistake no longer; the kingdom is to be taken from them; 
as the occupants of the vineyard, they are to be ejected. But is this 
all? does this exhaust their doom? What about that doom may this 
new image of the stone convey? "Whosoever shall fall on this stone 
shall be broken, but on whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to 
powder." First the stone is passive, suffering all kinds of rough 
usage to be heaped upon it, avenging itself the while for all the 
insults offered by causing those who offer them to stumble over it, 
and fall and be broken. But at last, as if invested with some inner 
living power, or as if lifted and wielded by some invisible but all- 
powerful hand, it becomes active, gets into motion, lifts itself up, and 
with a crushing weight descends upon its despisers and grinds them 
to powder. Such was Christ to that commonwealth of the Jews, to 
that proud theocracy of which the men before him were the head. 
By the Great Architect he had been laid of old in Zion, the chief 
foundation of the great spiritual edifice to be reared out of the ruins 
of the Fall. For many a generation he had been a stone of stumbling 
and a rock of offence. All these wrongs of the past he passively 
had borne, and now in his own person he is to submit to reproach 
and suffering and death ; but the hour that was to see him exalted 
because of this, and proclaimed to be the head of the corner, was to 
see him coming also in judgment. He was to arise out of his place ; 
he was to pour contempt on his despisers; utter desolation was to 



516 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 

come upon the city and people of the Jews. The stone wa3 to 
fall upon it, and it was in truth a very grinding of that land to 
powder, when every vestige of its ancient institutions was swept 
away, its people perished in multitudes, and the remnant, scattered 
over all the earth, was as the dust which the wind drives to and fro. 
What Jesus was to the Jews, he is in a certain sense to all. 
Primarily and mainly, he is set before us as the one and only true 
and broad and firm foundation on which to build our hopes ; a foun- 
dation open and easy of access, no guarding fence around it, so near 
that a single step is all that is needed to plant us on it, broad 
enough for all to stand upon, and firm enough to sustain the weight 
of the whole world's dependence. Such is Christ to all who go to 
him in humility, in simplicity, in child-like trust, resting upon him 
and upon him only for their forgiveness and acceptance with God. 
But such he may not be, he is not, to all. The very stone, so elect 
and precious to some, to others may be a stone of stumbling and a 
rock of offence. There before us all, in the broad highway of life, it 
lies. It will bear now unmoved and unprovoked any treatment that 
you may give. But it shall not remain so for ever; and woe to 
him who, having despised and rejected it all through life, shall see 
it darkening above his head, descending to crush. It were hettej 
for that man that he had never been born ! 



IV. 

The Marriage of the King's Son — Question as to 
the Tribute- Money.* 

TUESDAY. 

Having repelled the challenge to state and to produce the author- 
ity upon which he was acting, Jesus had addressed first to the 
challengers the parable of the two sons, and then to the people 
the parable of the wicked husbandmen. In both of these parables 
the conduct of his rejecters had been exposed, and the fate in store 
for them foretold. Yet another parable was added, intended to 
complete that picture of the future which Jesus would hold ap 
before their eyes. This parable, the last addressed by our Lord 
to the people at large, was partly a repetition, partly an expansion 

* Matt. 22 : 1-22 : Mark 12 : 13-17 ; Luke 20 : 20-26. 



THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON, 517 

of the one delivered some time before in Persea, on the occasion 
of an entertainment given to Christ by a chief Pharisee, and which 
is recorded in the Mth chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke. It is 
interesting to notice the differences between the two, corresponding 
so accurately, as they do, with the differences of time and circum- 
Itances under which they were spoken. When the first was uttered, 
the hostility of the hierarchy, though deep and deadly, was latent. 
The certain man, therefore, who makes a supper, and sends out his 
servant to tell them that were bidden to come, for all things were 
now ready, has nothing more to complain of than that his messenger 
and his message were both treated with neglect. With more or less 
courteousness, more or less decision of purpose, more or less implied 
preference for other engagements, the invitation was refused. And 
the penalty visited upon this refusal was simply exclusion from the 
banquet. V For I say unto you that none of those men which were 
bidden shall taste of my supper." 

In the second parable, the guilt of the first invited guests is 
greater, the penalty more severe. The certain man who makes & 
feast becomes a king, invitations issuing from whom had all the 
character of commands. And it is for no common purpose that 
the royal banquet is prepared. It is for a great state occasion; to 
celebrate a great state event. Even therefore had the king's invita- 
tion met with no other or different reception from that given to 
the invitation of the householder, a much higher guilt had been 
involved in declining it ; for a royal banquet made under such 
circumstances had something in it of a public or political character. 
To make light of an invitation to such a banquet, to plead any of 
the events or duties or engagements of ordinary life as a reason 
for declinature and absence, would not only be in the highest degree 
discourteous, it would have a taint of treason in it, an element of 
disloyalty and rebellion. 

In the one case a single servant is sent forth, and when he tells 
the bidden guests to come, for all things are now ready, with one 
consent they begin to make excuse; but there is nothing of con- 
tempt or malignity displayed towards either the provider of the 
feast or the servant who bears the summons. There is an apparent 
desire to make out something like a good excuse. In the second 
parable the king sends out not one, but a band of servants, who 
meet with a flat refusal. Other servants are sent forth, not to 
punish, not to announce the king's purpose to exclude, but to renew 
the invitation — to entreat the refusers to reconsider their resolution. 
Some make light of it, treat this second invitation with even greater 



518 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

disrespect than the first; while others are so provoked that they 
take the messengers, spitefully entreat them, and slay them. Is it 
wonderful that the wrath of the king should in consequence of this 
be so much greater than that of the simple householder; that he 
should treat the heavier offence with a deeper mark of displeasure 
than mere exclusion from his presence and his table ? " He sends 
forth his armies and destroys these murderers, and burns up their 
city." 

This bringing in of armies, this mention of a city and its destruc- 
tion, at once calls up to our thoughts the ruin hovering over Jeru- 
salem, and teaches us to connect the parable of the marriage-feast 
with that of the wicked husbandmen; both intended to set forth 
the terrible punishment of the Jewish people — the taking of the 
kingdom from them, and the giving it to others. In the closing 
part, however, of the latter parable — -that which speaks of the new 
guests brought in from the highways, and the king coming in and 
detecting the man without the wedding-garment— it goes beyond 
the former; it points not to Jewish but to Christian times. And 
it should fix our attention all the more upon the closing section 
of the parable, that while in all the other teachings of our Lord 
during his last day in the temple, strict regard was had to the 
audience that was then before him — to the events that were so soon 
to transpire in Jerusalem and Judea — he casts here a prophetic 
glance upon the ages that were to succeed the fall of the Jewish 
theocracy — as if he could not pass away from his pre-intimation 
of the forfeiture of the kingdom by the sons of Abraham without 
warning those who were to be brought in to take their place, that 
a no less watchful eye would be upon them as they sat down at the 
provided banquet, that the badge of loyalty without and the spirit 
of true loyalty within would be required of all, and that the want 
of it would incur a penalty not less heavy than that visited on their 
predecessors, the chief priests, the scribes, the elders. 

Their wrath at the speaker knew no bounds. They would have 
laid hold of him and borne him off to inflict the condign punish- 
ment that in their eyes he so fully merited. But they feared the 
people. They were not sure of the temper of the crowd by which 
they were surrounded, not sure how far they would be supported by 
the Roman authorities. Outwardly curbing, inwardly nursing their 
wrath, they withdraw to try another method. They have been 
baffled in the attempt openly to confront him; but could they not 
entangle him in his talk by some crafty questions, and force from 
him an answer that might supply material for accusation, "that so 






QUESTION AS TO THE TRIBUTE-MONEY. 519 

they might deliver him unto the power and authority of the gov- 
ernor"? Luke 20:20. Leaving some of their underlings to v»atch 
him, so as to be ready to report all he says and does, they retire 
to hold a secret conclave. They call the Herodians into council, 
wliom they find quite willing to combine with them in the execution 
of any plan that promised to prevail against the man whom, they 
equally hate. The deliberation is brief. A step at once suggests 
itself that cannot but succeed, which, one way or other, is certain 
to damage, if not utterly to ruin, their common enemy. The chief 
priests, however, and scribes, and elders, the leading men who have 
just had that humiliating colloquy with him, will not go themselves 
to carry out this well-concocted scheme. They have had enough 
of personal collision. They will not venture again into his presence, 
to be taunted and maligned before the people. It is besides a 
very low and hypocritical piece of work that is to be done, and 
they commit it to other hands, who take with them some of these 
Herodians, to give the matter less of a purely Pharisaic character. 

Having got their instructions, these emissaries approach Jesus, 
feigning themselves to be sincere men, bent upon ascertaining what 
their duty is. And when they come they say to him, " Master, we 
know that thou art true, and carest for no man, for thou regardest 
not the person of men, but teachest the way of God in truth"— a 
very insidious piece of flattery, a great part of its power lying 
in the apparent honesty with which the men who offer it embrace 
themselves among the number of those for whom they are sure that 
Jesus will not care; a kind of flattery consisting in attributing to 
the person flattered a superiority to flattery, to which, if well admin- 
istered, our weak humanity is peculiarly susceptible. With this 
artful preface, which they hope will tempt him to speak boldly 
out the answer that may suit them, they say, "Master, is it lawful 
to give tribute to Caesar, or not? Shall we give, or shall we not 
give ?" It is not the expediency but the lawfulness of paying the 
tribute exacted by the Romans, that they ask about. That lawful- 
ness was denied by many who, under the force and pressure of 
necessity, yet paid the tax. The Pharisees themselves, who owed 
much of their power and popularity to their faithful adherence to 
the principles of the old Jewish theocracy, disputed the lawfulness 
of the exaction. They took their stand here upon a very plain 
declaration of Moses : " Thou shalt in any wise set him king over 
ihee whom the Lord thy God shall choose; one from among thy 
brethren shalt thou set king over thee: thou may est not set a 
stranger over thee, which is not thy brother." Deut. 17:15. When 



520 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

the Herodian family, one not of Jewish but of Iduinean extraction, 
backed by the power of Borne, took possession of the throne of 
Judea, the entire Jewish Sanhedrim, appealing to this scripture, 
protested against what they rightly enough regarded as a violation 
of the Mosaic law. Their protest, however, was unavailing. The 
firs I two Herods were kept upon the throne by the Roman emperors, 
whose policy it then was through them to rule Judea. Ere long 
indeed, and this happened during our Saviour's life, the mask was 
dropped. The sovereignty of Judea was directly assumed by the 
Romans. One or other of its northern provinces was given to one 
of the Herods, who governed it under the title of tetrarch or king; 
but Judea proper was placed under a Roman procurator. Such a 
method of foreign rule was still more obnoxious to the Jewish 
people than the government of the Herods, who, though by descent 
Idumean, had by intermarriage with Jewish families won for them- 
selves something like a Jewish title. It was the policy, and we 
have no doubt it was the honest principle of the Pharisees, secretly 
to foster the general and deep, but repressed and smouldering oppo- 
sition to the Roman rule. Distinguished as a religious party for 
their extreme and punctilious attachment to the ceremonialism of 
the Jewish law, as a political party they won golden opinions of the 
people by standing in the vanguard as upholders of the national 
independence. Among the many political questions which the state 
of the country raised, was one about the payment of the poll-tax 
imposed by the foreign governors. Arguing from the premise that 
the whole foundation of the Roman authority was hollow, grounded 
on usurpation and incapable of defence, the leading political Phar- 
isees vehemently denied the legality of the imposition. The Hero- 
dians, the defenders of the legitimacy of the Herodian dynasty, 
could not well deny the justice of the Roman claim to civil suprem- 
acy, as it had been by the Roman power that the dynasty which 
they supported had been instituted. Yet among them there were 
many who bore no good will to the Italian conquerors, and who 
looked to the rule of the Herods as the best protection against an 
entirely foreign domination — the best preservative of something like 
a separate and independent national existence. Such kind of Hero- 
dians perhaps they were ^sdio now associated themselves with the 
Pharisees in putting the question to Jesus — "Master, is it lawful 
to give tribute to Caesar or not? Shall we give, or shall we not 
give f 

They think that they have shut him up; no door seems open to 
evade or to decline an answer. A simple affirmative or a simple 



QUESTION AS TO THE TRIBUTE-MONEY. 521 

negative rffust be given. On either side, the difficulty and the 
danger to Jesus seem nearly equal. If he shall say it is lawful 
to give tribute to Caesar, his favor with the people is gone; his 
pretensions to be the Messiah are scattered to the winds; from 
being an object of attraction and attachment he becomes an object 
of alienation and contempt. Should he, on the other hand, say, as 
they fondly hope he will that it is not lawful, the weapon is at once 
put into their hands which they can use against him with fatal 
effect. They have but to report him to Pilate as a stirrer-up of 
sedition, and prove their charge by his own declaration made in 
the presence of the people. But they are not prepared for the 
manner in which the insidious question is to be dealt with. " Why 
tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?" said Jesus; "show me a penny"™ 
the coin in common circulation. There were two kinds of money 
at that time in use among the Jews — the Roman, by which all the 
common business of life was transacted, and in which the capitation- 
tax, about which the question that had been raised, was paid ; 
and the old Jewish, still partially employed, and in which especially 
the temple tax was paid. They bring him one of the Roman coins — 
a denarius. He looks at it and says, "Whose image and super- 
scription is this?" They say to him, "Caesar's." He says to them, 
"Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the thinga 
that are God's." 

Jjj this singular and short reply the hypocrisy and the incon- 
sistency of his questioners are at once exposed. The mere payment 
of the tribute is but a secondary matter after all. The true, the 
great question was, Should the Roman rule be submitted to or not? 
was it or was it not lawful to submit to that authority, to bear 
the foreign yoke? This question the Jewish people and these 
Pharisees, their most influential leaders, had suffered so far to be 
decided. They had yielded to and accepted the foreign yoke. 
There was this manifest token of subjection, that Roman money was 
circulating among them as the common and accepted coin of the 
realm. It was an acknowledged maxim, it. had become a rabbinical 
proverb, that the coin of a country tells who is its king. Things 
being in that state in Judea, it was an idle, it was a deceitful, it was 
a base and malignant thing, to come to Jesus and try to force from 
him such a decision upon that isolated point of the payment of the 
tox as would involve him with the Roman authorities. Let those 
who thought Caesar was a usurper, and were prepared to cast off 
his authority, raise at once the standard of rebellion, and try the 
hazard of a civil war. Let those who, holding the existing govern- 



522 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

ment to be illegitimate, thought at the same time that matters were 
not ripe for open resistance, bide their time, and mature their meas- 
ures as well and as secretly as they pleased ; but let not any, like 
these Pharisees and Herodians, while fawning upon the Eoinan 
governor, and forward in all the outward expressions of submission, 
pretend to have any difficulty about the payment of the tax; above 
all, let them not, while trying to keep up their own power and 
popu 1 arity by letting it be understood that they sympathized with 
the people in their opposition to the foreign rule, try to inveigle 
one who from the first had stood aloof and declined to take any 
part whatever in the political dissensions of the country, so as to 
accuse him to the governor, and have him condemned and executed 
for that which, neither in their own eyes, nor in that of the great 
majority of their fellow-countrymen, was accounted as a crime. 

Coupling it with his demand for a sight of the Roman coin, and 
his pointing to the image and superscription stamped thereon, I 
have no doubt that those of Christ's auditors would have been right 
who interpreted the first part of Christ's answer, " Eender to Caesar 
the things that are Caesar's," as implying that it was lawful to pay 
the tribute-money; right and consistent — so long as Caesar or any 
one was acknowledged as king, and the money from his mint taken 
and employed — that the tribute levied by him should be paid; the 
duty of obedience springing from the fact of the existing dominion. 
But there can be as little doubt that those also of that audience 
would have been right who interpreted the second part of Christ's 
answer, "Eender to God the things that are God's," as carrying with 
it a severe and most merited rebuke of his questioners. For had 
they but fulfilled that acknowledged obligation, had they been but 
true to the spirit and laws of their own ancient government, no 
Eoman soldier had ever invaded their borders, no Eoman governor 
had sat in the Hall of Judgment at Jerusalem. It was their own 
failure in rendering to God the things that were his, a failure of 
which Pharisees and Herodians had alike been guilty, which had 
reduced their country to bondage; and now to be wrangling about 
the narrow question of the paying of the tribute, what was it but 
as if the men who by some act and deed had exposed themselves 
to the infliction of a certain penalty, were to sit down and discuss 
on abstract grounds the legitimacy of the authority by which that 
penalty was enacted ? 

Considering Christ's answer in its immediate bearings upon those 
who then stood before him, it is not difficult to see how completely 
it availed to silence his questioners, and to put it out of the power 






QUESTION AS TO THE TK1BUTE-MONEY. 523 

of any of the parties there represented to turn it against him. They 
could only marvel at him, and hold their peace. 

But separating this memorable saying of Christ from the par- 
ticular circumstances under which it was uttered, and the immediate 
object it was intended to subserve, let us look at it as an aphorism 
of infinite wisdom, thrown into that proverbial form that gives it so 
easy and so strong a hold upon the memory, and promulgated for 
the universal guidance of mankind. " Bender unto Caesar the things 
that are Caesar's ; unto God the things that are God's." Both 
precepts may and ought to be obeyed. There need not be, there 
ought not to be, any discord or collision between them. Christ 
would not have imposed the double obligation had there been any 
natural or necessary conflict between the two. Each may be met 
and fully satisfied, the other being left entire and uninvaded. It 
ought never to keep a man from rendering all due obedience to 
his earthly sovereign, that he is faithful in his allegiance to him 
who is King of kings and Lord of lords. It ought never to keep 
him from serving aright his Heavenly King, that he has an earthly 
one to whom honor and obedience are due. It would be to 
misinterpret altogether the golden rule of Christ, to regard it as 
if it set before us two masters, both of whom we were called to 
serve, the one having authority in one region and over so much 
ground, the other having authority over quite a different region 
and within quite different limits, whose claims might occasionally 
become competing and conflicting. In rendering to Caesar the 
things that righteously are Caesar's, we can never be keeping from 
God the things that righteously are God's. And if the things 
that are God's be duly and fully rendered, Caesar shall get what 
is his as one of the very things that God requires at our hands. 
The second precept, in fact, embraces the first as the greater covers 
the less. 

Let it, however, be at once acknowledged, that rich and full 
of wisdom as the saying of our Lord is, it appears to fail in appli- 
cation; for is not, it may be said, the very point upon which we 
especially need guidance, left by it vague and undecided? What 
are the things that are Caesar's? What are the things that are 
God's? How far in each case can and may we go? Where in 
each case ought we to stop? A line of demarcation it is thought 
there must be here between the two sets of obligations, the two 
kinds of duty and of service. But the adage does not help us to 
lay it down. Now, strange as it may appear, it is the very absence 
of any such precise and definite directory as the one thus craved 



524 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

for, its careful avoidance of drawing any separating line between 
our civil and political duties on the one hand, and our religious 
ones on the other, which, to our view, stamps it with the signature 
of a wisdom that is divine. Christ does not define what we are 
to do, or what we are to refuse to do, in order to render to Caesar 
Ihe things that are Caesar's. No; but he gives us to understand 
that these never can be, or at least never ought to be, such as to 
interfere in the slightest degree with the higher duty we owe to 
God. He does not define what we are to do, or what not to do, 
in order to render to God the things that are his. No; but he 
gives us to understand that these never are or can be such as to 
interfere in the slightest degree with the dutiful obedience that 
we owe to kings and to all that are in authority over us. "We are 
not, under the cloak of being faithful to Caesar, to become disobe- 
dient to God. We are not, under the cloak of being obedient to 
God, to be unfaithful to our earthly ruler. And if, with equal 
singleness of eye, equal purity of motive, we make it equally a 
matter of conscience to keep both the precepts that he has linked 
together, no discord shall arise, no need of dividing lines be felt. 
I believe it to be impossible logically to define, so as absolutely 
to distinguish from one another, our social and political duties from 
our religious ones. To look only at a single section of the wide 
domain : when church and state have come into conflict, the 
attempt has always failed, I believe must ever fail, to mark off 
the boundary-line between them, and to say exactly and all along 
the line where the authority of the one ends, and that of the other 
begins. Collisions, unhappily, have arisen. The past is full of 
them: no darker chapters in the history of our race than those 
in which the record of these conflicts is preserved. But how has 
this come about ? From kings becoming tyrants : from their forget- 
ting that they, and all their subjects along with them, should render 
to God the things that are God's; which cannot be done unless the 
rights of the individual conscience be respected, and each man left 
free to believe and worship as that conscience dictates; from priests 
becoming kings, from their forgetting that Christ's kingdom is not 
of this world, and that it was never meant to be so administered as 
to call in the aids of earthly power — to use those instruments which 
earthly sovereigns are alone entitled to employ. 

On both sides here the deepest wrongs have been done, the 
foulest crimes committed. The august name of royalty has been 
abused, to trample upon the still more sacred rights of conscience. 
[t was abused when the proud monarch of Babylon raised the golden 



SPIEITUAL DESPOTISM. 525 

image in the plain of Dura, and issued his order that all people and 
nations should worship it; it was abused when Darius signed the 
writing and issued the decree that no man should present any peti- 
tion to God or man for thirty days, but to himself; it was abused 
when the rulers of the Jews summoned Peter and John before them, 
and straitly charged them that they should speak no more of Jesus 
to the people; it was abused when the emperor of Germany called 
Martin Luther before the Diet, and commanded him to retract the 
faith that he had derived from the sacred oracles; it was abused 
when the Stuarts prescribed to the Covenanters of Scotland the man- 
ner in which they were to worship God, and treated all who refused 
compliance with their ordinances as rebels against the throne, per- 
secuting them even unto death. We cannot count Daniel, Sha- 
drach, Meshach, and Abednego, the apostles of our Lord, Luther, 
the Scottish Covenanters, as violators of the precept, "Render unto 
Caesar the things that are Caesar's," because at cost or peril of their 
lives they heroically resolved to obey God rather than man. 

The sacred name of religion has also been abused. It was 
abused when Cromwell taught his men to see in their enemies the 
enemies of the Lord, and claimed the divine sanction for all the 
slaughter effected by the swords of his Ironsides; it was abused 
when he who arrogated to himself the title of God's vicegerent upoc 
earth, raised himself above all earthly sovereigns, took it on him to 
sit in judgment upon their titles to their crowns, dethroned princes 
at his pleasure, and released subjects from allegiance to their lawful 
kings. It was still more awfully abused when spiritual offenders 
against the church — those w T ho believed not as she would have them 
to believe, worshipped not as she would have them Worship — were 
treated as criminals, to be punished by the sword, and the civil 
power was called on to enforce the spiritual sentence, and many a 
dungeon witnessed the torture, and many a death-pile was raised, 
and many a martyr-spirit w r as chased up through the fires to its 
place beneath the altar. 

Fanatics on the one hand, and despots on the other, have sadly 
traversed the Saviour's golden rule, and in doing so have only 
taught us how difficult a thing it is for weak humanity, when under 
the blinding influence of prejudice and passion, to bear in mind the 
double precept of our Lord: "Render to Caesar the things that arc 
Caesar's: to God the things that are God's." 



526 THE i^±FE OF CHEIST. 



Question of the Sadducees as to the Resurrec- 
tion of the Dead.* 

TUESDAY. 

Baffled and exposed by Christ's answer as to the payment 
of the tribute-money, the Pharisees retire. And now their great 
rivals, the Sadducees, take the field, and try to entangle Jesus in 
his talk. Though constituting a powerful party, it is not till the 
closing scene of the Saviour's life that the Sadducees appear to have 
taken any active part against him. It was alien from their disposi- 
tion to interfere with any popular religious movement till it took 
such shape as made it in their eyes dangerous to the state, and 
then they did not scruple summarily to quench it. They looked 
with a haughty contempt upon what they regarded as the ground- 
less beliefs and idle superstitious practices of the great bulk of their 
countrymen. In common with them they believed indeed in the 
divine origin of the Jewish faith, restricted as they took that faith 
to be mainly to the announcement that there was but one God ? 
the God of Israel, in opposition to all idolatry. They admitted the 
divine authority of the laws and institutions of Moses, whom they 
especially honored as their great heaven-sent and heaven-instructed 
lawgiver. But they rejected the whole of that oral tradition which 
had grown up around the primitive Mosaic revelation, which had 
come generally to be regarded, and was especially defended by the 
Pharisees, as of equal authority with it. They accepted the other 
books of the Old Testament as well as the Pentateuch, but there 
seems good reason to believe that they held the latter in peculiar 
and pre-eminent esteem. In their interpretation of the Pentateuch 
they adhered rigidly to the letter, rejecting all the false glosses and 
elaborate explanations and inferences which the Pharisaic Rabbis 
had introduced. Into their religious creed the Sadducees would 
admit nothing which Moses had not directly and unambiguously 
announced. True to their character as the freethinkers or rational- 
ists of their age and nation, they were incredulous as to any other 
existences or powers influencing human affairs beyond those that 
lay open to the observation of their senses. They did not — as 
professed disciples of Moses they could not — repudiate the agencv 

* Matt. 22 : 23-33 ; Mark 12 : 18-27 ; Luke 20 : 27-40. 



QUESTION OF THE SADDUCEES. 527 

of God as exerted in the creation and government of the world. 
But they limited that agency to a general supervision and control 
which left full scope to human volition and human effort, which they 
regarded as the chief factors in the unfolding of events. So far aa 
their professed faith would let them, they were materialists. The} 
acknowledged the existence of one great Spirit. They could not 
deny that beings called angels had occasionally, in the early times 
whose history was recorded by Moses, appeared to take some part 
in earthly affairs. But, disbelieving in the existence of any other 
spirit save that of the Supreme, whatever their explanation of these 
angelic manifestations, it was one that left them at liberty to deny, 
as they did, that there was any permanent and separate order of 
beings called angels standing between men and God. They said 
that there was "no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit." Acts 
23 : 8. They believed in the soul of man only as exhibited in and by 
the body which enshrined it; with that body it perished at death. 
The future state, a world of rewards and punishments hereafter 
for the things now done in the body, was but a dream. To speak 
of the resurrection of the body at some after period was a solecism. 
There was no spirit for it to be reunited with. It might please 
God, out of the materials that had once formed one human body, to 
make another like it, and to plant in it another soul; but there was 
there could be, no real resurrection of the dead, no rising to life 
again of the same beings that had been buried. If such a thing 
could be, and were actually to take place, the beings so raised would 
return (as they imagined) to the same kind of life as that which 
previously had been theirs; and from the very absurdities and con- 
tradictions which would be implied in this, they drew many an 
argument against the popular belief in a resurrection, which those 
adhering to that belief, holding it as they did in a very gross and 
materialist fashion, were unable to meet. 

How did such men look upon Jesus Christ? Perhaps in the 
first instance as a weak but harmless enthusiast, little worth their 
notice, or worth only a smile or a scoff. His teaching, so far as 
it was reported to them, or they knew anything about it, was utterly 
distasteful to them; it was animated by a spirit totally the reverse 
of theirs; it was full of faith in the invisible. In it the spiritual, the 
future, the eternal, not only enwrapped but absorbed the present, 
the temporary, the sensible. God was no longer a mere name for 
a remote and inaccessible Being, who sat aloof upon a throne oi 
exalted supremacy. He was a Father, continually engaged in guid- 
ing, protecting, providing; clothing the lilies of the field; feeding 



528 THE LIJFE OF CHRIST. 

the fowls of the air; causing his sun to shine; sending his rain from 
heaven: caring for all the creatures of his power, all the children 
of his love. No thought was to be taken for the body as compared 
with that which should be taken for the soul. The world beyond 
the present stood out in vivid perspective and relief. The angels 
of God were represented as rejoicing there over each sinner that 
repented on earth, and the spirits of the dead as waiting to welcome 
each brother spirit as it passed up to its place beside them in the 
heavens. 

How the Sadducees regarded the miracles of our Lord it is 
difficult to say. They would regard his feeding of the hungry and 
his curing of the diseased either as impositions, or exercises of some 
occult power of which he had become possessed. But when he 
pretended to cast out devils and to raise the dead, his miracles came 
into direct collision with their unbelief, and awakened more than 
incredulity — stirred up malignity. He was in their eyes a base 
and bad man who could thus deceive the people. If he would 
prove that he came from God, let some sign direct from God be 
given. The only occasion on which, during the course of our Sa- 
viour's ministry, the Sadducees interfered with him, was when they 
once joined the Pharisees in demanding from him a sign from 
heaven. They got signs enough, some of them wrought under their 
own eyes, as in the healing of the man born blind, and in the 
raising of Lazarus, but signs which only increasingly exasperated 
them, so that when they saw that the movement created by Jesus 
was assuming politically so threatening an aspect, they were quite 
willing at last to league with the Pharisees, and assist in removing 
him; for it was better, so said one of themselves, that one man 
should die than that the whole nation should perish. Parties to the 
recent resolution come to by the Sanhedrim, the Sadducees were 
watching with as jealous eyes as the Pharisees all that was taking 
place in the courts of the temple. Though conspiring with them in 
their design, it may have been with some degree of secret com- 
placency that they noticed how in the word-battle about the tribute- 
money he had foiled the rival sect. They have a question of their 
own, however, with which, as they fancy, he will find it more difficult 
to deal; one with which they had often pressed their adversaries, 
and to which they had never got any satisfactory reply. They 
will see how Jesus will deal with it. If he agree with them, then 
adieu to his power with the people; if he fail to answer, what a 
triumph both over him and all credulous believers in a resurrection ! 

They state their case and propose their query. Moses had 



QUESTION OF THE SADDUCEES. 529 

commanded that if a Jew died childless, leaving a widow, his brother 
should marry her, and had ruled that the child of the second mar- 
riage should be reckoned as the heir of the brother predeceased. 
There were seven brothers, they told Jesus, who all died, each 
having been successively the husband of the same woman; and last 
of all the woman died: "in the resurrection, therefore," they say 
to him, very confidently — somewhat coarsely and contemptuously — 
" whose wife shall she be of the seven? " Christ's answer is direct 
and emphatic. " Ye do err," he says, " not knowing the Scriptures, 
nor the power of God." His charge against them is not one of 
hypocrisy, but of error, of wrong belief, that error having a twofold 
source: 1. Their ignorance of the meaning of the Scriptures, of that 
very book of Moses from which they had quoted; 2. Their ignorance 
of the power of God, of the manner of its exercise generally, and, 
more particularly, of the way in which it should be exercised in 
effecting that resurrection which they denied. Taking these sources 
of error in inverse order, Jesus first unfolds wherein their error 
as to the power of God consisted. They looked upon it too much 
as a mere force, illimitable, indeed, yet fixed, unvarying, working 
now as it had ever done before, to work hereafter even as it was 
working now. They failed to recognise it as the forthputting of 
the energy of a living Being who was ever thereby embodying his 
will, expressing his purposes, executing his plans — the very same 
error as to the power of God which lies at the root of a large part 
of our modern infidelity, traceable, as it easily is, up to a denial 
of the personal agency of a Being who has plans and purposes and 
a will of which the whole creation is but a constant and gradual 
development. But, still more particularly, the Sadducees had erred 
in limiting the future manifestations of the power of God, in imagin- 
ing that if the dead were to rise again, they were to live subject 
to the same conditions, united to each other by the same relation- 
ships with those that now exist. Prior to the incarnation, very little 
beyond the bare fact that there was to be a resurrection of the 
dead had been revealed. Had any right conceptions of the char- 
acter and power of the great Creator been entertained, preparing 
the mind that entertained them for an endless variety in the future 
as we now know that there has been in the past, the very nature of 
the fact, apart from all further information about it, that there was 
to be hereafter a general resurrection of the dead, should have stifled 
in the birth such an idle objection as that which these Sadducees 
were urging; for, come how it might, let it be attended with what- 
ever other outward changes in the physical condition of our globe, 

Life of Christ. 34 



530 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

it was in itself a change too great to allow of any ideas borrowed 
from the present condition of things being transferred to that new 
state of which it must form the initial stage. But Jesus goes a step 
farther than this: he puts his hand forward partially to lift the veil, 
and tell somewhat of the nature and the extent to which these 
changes will be carried which the resurrection will involve. "And 
Jesus, answering, said unto them, The children of this world marry, 
and are given in marriage : but they which shall be accounted worthy 
to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither 
marry, nor are given in marriage: neither can they die any more: 
for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, 
being the children of the resurrection. " Luke 20 : 34-36. This 
much is told us here; that great changes are in store for us; that 
out of the grave a new economy is to arise, elevated in all its condi- 
tions and relationships above that under which we now dwell. But 
how much also remains untold; how much to check that prurient 
curiosity with which we are tempted to pry into the future, and extort 
from it its secrets ! 

We have got in the Bible two brief sketches which none but the 
finger of God could have drawn, a sketch of the beginning and a 
sketch of the end of the world as it now is. The one, the picture 
of the past, the story of the creation, how very difficult has it been 
for us to decipher it; how slowly are we spelling out its meaning; 
how much of it still remains obscure; how utterly should we have 
failed in interpreting it aright, had it not so happened that, in these 
later years, we have got access to other records, also somewhat 
dim as yet, which the events as they occurred stamped enduringly 
upon the solid rocks. Now if the scriptural picture of the past 
was so dark and so difficult to understand, was in our hands so 
long misunderstood and misinterpreted, how can we expect it to be 
otherwise with the scriptural picture of the future, which tells of a 
coming epoch more unlike the present than is the present to any 
epoch of the past? How wise then and becoming for us, till the 
events occur that shall yield the true interpretation, to confine our- 
selves to the simple and general truths that lie upon the face of 
those figurative descriptions of the future state which abound in 
the Bible, and which ought never to be treated as literally and 
historically true. How vain to use what were meant only to be 
obscure hints, as stepping-stones from which fancy may safely mount 
and soar away at random. Let us be satisfied with the little that 
we can now know. It doth not yet appear what we shall be. We 
see but through a glass darkly, nor will any straining of our eyeballs 



QUESTION OF THE SADDUCEES. 531 

make clearer that cloudy medium through which alone we ire per- 
mitted to gaze. Standing with that wonderful future before us, 
on which our eye cannot but often and eagerly be fixed, there is 
happily for us another and a better occupation than that of filling 
Hie void spaces with forms and colors of our own creation. Children 
A that coming resurrection we all must be. No mountain shall have 
breadth enough to cover us, no ocean depth enough to hide lis, 
when once the imperial summons soundeth, "Arise, ye dead, and 
come to judgment." But children of a blessed resurrection, of the 
resurrection unto life, we can only be by becoming now the children 
of God. Let that be our present, our steadfast aim; let that goal 
be reached, and then let us rest quietly in the assurance that, raised 
with Christ, we shall be sharers of his immortality, shall die no 
more, but be as the angels which are in heaven. 

The error of the Sadducees as to the power of God having been 
exposed, Christ proceeds to notice their error as to the Scriptures: 
"As touching the dead that they rise; have ye not read in the 
book of Moses?" Mark 12:26. Among the Jews, down till near 
the times of Christ, the first five books of our Bible formed but 
one book, written continuously on one roll of parchment. It k 
out of this book, called ordinarily the Book of the Law, that he 
quotes a sentence in proof of the resurrection. He might have 
cited other ampler and much clearer testimony from other parts 
of the sacred Scriptures, especially from the Psalms and the books 
of Job, Daniel, and Hosea; but he is dealing now with the Saddu- 
cees, and he takes the passage from the same writings to which they 
had themselves appealed. "Have ye not read in the book of Moses, 
how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of 
Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is 
not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: ye therefore do 
greatly err." Mark 12 : 26, 27. The link that binds here the premise 
to the conclusion is anything but apparent at first sight. The infer- 
ence seems neither natural nor necessary. Does God's calling him- 
self the God of the departed patriarchs of itself prove that these 
patriarchs were still living? Is not this the simple and only mean- 
ing of the passage quoted: that he who had been the God of the 
fathers would be the God of the children? Even granting that the 
continued existence of those, of whom God spake as being still their 
God, was to be legitimately inferred from the expression cited, what 
proof was involved in that of their resurrection? Might the soul 
not live though the body were left for ever in the grave? In 
answer to such questions, let it be noted that Christ's reply to the 



530 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

it was in itself a change too great to allow of any ideas borrowed 
from the present condition of things being transferred to that new 
state of which it must form the initial stage. But Jesus goes a step 
farther than this: he puts his hand forward partially to lift the veil, 
and tell somewhat of the nature and the extent to which these 
changes will be carried which the resurrection will involve. "And 
Jesus, answering, said unto them, The children of this world marry, 
and are given in marriage : but they which shall be accounted worthy 
to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither 
marry, nor are given in marriage: neither can they die any more: 
for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, 
being the children of the resurrection." Luke 20 : 34-36. This 
much is told us here; that great changes are in store for us; that 
out of the grave a new economy is to arise, elevated in all its condi- 
tions and relationships above that under which we now dwell. But 
how much also remains untold; how much to check that prurient- 
curiosity with which we are tempted to pry into the future, and extort 
from it its secrets ! 

We have got in the Bible two brief sketches which none but the 
finger of God could have drawn, a sketch of the beginning and a 
sketch of the end of the world as it now is. The one, the picture 
of the past, the story of the creation, how very difficult has it been 
for us to decipher it; how slowly are we spelling out its meaning; 
how much of it still remains obscure; how utterly should we have 
failed in interpreting it aright, had it not so happened that, in these 
later years, we have got access to other records, also somewhat 
dim as yet, which the events as they occurred stamped enduringly 
upon the solid rocks. Now if the scriptural picture of the past 
was so dark and so difficult to understand, was in our hands so 
long misunderstood and misinterpreted, how can we expect it to be 
otherwise with the scriptural picture of the future, which tells of a 
coming epoch more unlike the present than is the present to any 
epoch of the past? How wise then and becoming for us, till the 
events occur that shall yield the true interpretation, to confine our- 
selves to the simple and general truths that lie upon the face of 
those figurative descriptions of the future state which abound in 
the Bible, and which ought never to be treated as literally and 
historically true. How vain to use what were meant only to be 
obscure hints, as stepping-stones from which fancy may safely mount 
and soar away at random. Let us be satisfied with the little that 
we can now know. It doth not yet appear what we shall be. We 
see but through a glass darkly, nor will any straining of our eyeballs 



QUESTION OF THE SADDUCEES. 53J 

make clearer that cloudy medium through which alone we ire per- 
mitted to gaze. Standing with that wonderful future before us, 
on which our eye cannot but often and eagerly be fixed, there is 
happily for us another and a better occupation than that of filling 
the void spaces with forms and colors of our own creation. Children 
jf that coming resurrection we all must be. No mountain shall have 
breadth enough to cover us, no ocean depth enough to hide us, 
when once the imperial summons soundeth, "Arise, ye dead, and 
come to judgment." But children of a blessed resurrection, of the 
resurrection unto life, we can only be by becoming now the children 
of God. Let that be our present, our steadfast aim; let that goal 
be reached, and then let us rest quietly in the assurance that, raised 
with Christ, we shall be sharers of his immortality, shall die no 
more, but be as the angels which are in heaven. 

The error of the Sadducees as to the power of God having been 
exposed, Christ proceeds to notice their error as to the Scriptures: 
"As touching the dead that they rise; have ye not read in the 
book of Moses?" Mark 12:26. Among the Jews, down till near 
the times of Christ, the first five books of our Bible formed but 
one book, written continuously on one roll of parchment. It k 
out of this book, called ordinarily the Book of the Law, that he 
quotes a sentence in proof of the resurrection. He might have 
cited other ampler and much clearer testimony from other parts 
of the sacred Scriptures, especially from the Psalms and the books 
of Job, Daniel, and Hosea; but he is dealing now with the Saddu- 
cees, and he takes the passage from the same writings to which they 
had themselves appealed. "Have ye not read in the book of Moses, 
how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of 
Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is 
not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: ye therefore do 
greatly err." Mark 12 : 26, 27. The link that binds here the premise 
to the conclusion is anything but apparent at first sight. The infer- 
ence seems neither natural nor necessary. Does God's calling him- 
self the God of the departed patriarchs of itself prove that these 
patriarchs were still living? Is not this the simple and only mean- 
ing of the passage quoted: that he who had been the God of the 
fathers would be the God of the children? Even granting that the 
continued existence of those, of whom God spake as being still their 
God, was to be legitimately inferred from the expression cited, what 
proof was involved in that of their resurrection? Might the soul 
not live though the body were left for ever in the grave? In 
answer to such questions, let it be noted that Christ's reply to the 



534 THE LIFE OP CHRIST. 



VI. 

The Lawyer's Question — The Two Great Command- 
ments — Christ is David's Son and David's Lord. 

TUESDAY. 

Pharisees, Herodians, Sadducees have each in turn been foiled 
in their assaults. Jesus has either turned aside the edge of their 
insidious questions, or has given such reply as recoils upon the 
questioners. Among the auditors who are standing by while this 
questioning is going on, there is one, himself a Pharisee and a 
scribe, who, struck with admiration at our Lord's answer, ventures 
an inquiry of his own. In making it he does not appear to have 
been animated by any sinister or malignant motive. He may, as 
St. Matthew seems to intimate, have been incited by others to put 
his question, in the hope that it might puzzle or perplex, but the 
question itself has no such character, reveals no such intent ; bear- 
ing as it does all the marks of being the ingenuous inquiry of one 
who, disturbed and dissatisfied with the manifold classifications and 
frivolous distinctions introduced by the ordinary teachers of the law 
sought the judgment of Jesus in addressing to him the question, 
"Master, which is the great, the first of all the commandments?" 
' Is there any one commandment which is entitled to pre-eminence 
over all the rest ? if there be, what is that one command, and upon 
what ground does its claim to supremacy repose ?' Christ's answer 
is direct and explicit. There is, he tells the questioner, such a 
command. To love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul, 
and mind and strength, is the first and the great commandment 
of the law. But there is another, a second commandment, like 
unto the first, flowing out of it, and founded on it: "Thou shalt 
iove thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang 
ail the law and the prophets." 

The law of God, according to the view thus given of it, wad 
aot an aggregation of so many separate precepts, some of which 
a man might keep, while he broke others ; suggesting of course the 
double question whether he broke more than he kept, as if that 
were to decide whether on the whole he was a breaker or a keeper 
of the law; or, were that held to be too rude and mechanical a 
method of judging, suggesting a comparison in point of importance 

• Matt. 22 : 3^46 ; Mark 12 : 28-37. 






THE LAWYER'S QUESTION. 535 

between those commands that were kept and tho*(~ that were 

broken, so as to supply a better estimate of the amount and value 

of the obedience rendered. In opposition to all such views of the 

law of God — views not confined to the scribes and Pharisees of 

Christ's day, which he at the bottom of all those crude notions 

as to man's actual standing towards the divine law which circulate 

widely in the world we live in, Jesus teaches that a divine unity 

pervades that law, a unity that cannot be broken; all its single 

and separate commands resting upon a common, firm, immutable 

basis; all so connected in meaning, spirit, and obligation, that you 

cannot truly obey one without obeying all, nor braak one without 

breaking all. Looking at the law in this oneness of character, 

Jesus points to the two requirements of love to God and love to 

one another as containing within themselves the sum and substance 

of the whole. First we are called upon to love the Lord, to love 

him as our God, to love him with all our heart. It is not a mere 

barren faith in his divinity, a cold and distant homage, a bare 

acknowledgment of his sovereign right, a studious observance of 

prescribed forms of worship, the presenting of offerings, the making 

of sacrifices in his name and for his glory, that is required. Nothing 

but the supreme love of the heart, pouring out the whole wealth 

of its affections on him, can meet this great demand. There must 

be no other God before or beside him, no other having an equal 

or rival place in our regards. All idolatrous self-love, creature-love, 

world-love, must be renounced in order that this first and greatest 

of the commands be kept. "And thou shalt love thy neighboi 

as thyself." 'Thyself thou mayest and shouldest love, but not 

supremely, not as distinct from or independent of God, but as one 

of his children, as an agent in his hands, as an instrument of his 

grace?, as a vessel fashioned for his honor. Thus and thus only 

may self-love rightly form part of thy being, and enter into thy 

motives of action. And thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself:' 

a mode and measure of loving others which can be truly followed 

and obeyed only when love to God has predominated over the 

natural self-idolatry; for if a man love himself supremely, he can 

love no other as he loves himself. All, however, is reduced to order, 

all brought within the limits of a possible achievement, when God 

gets his first and rightful place. You cannot love the God of love 

as he requires, without loving your neighbor also. The one love 

includes the other, sustains and modulates the other. If a man 

say he loves God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar, and the truth 

is not in him. It is in this way that the second command is like 



5HG THE I^IFB OF CHBIST. 

anto the first. They are two, and at the same time one. The first 
eannot be kept while the second is broken, nor the second be kept 
while the first is broken. A false or spurious kind of love to God, 
showing itself in all manner of superstitious worship and self-mor- 
tification, you may have, coupled with intensely malign emotion 
towards others. Nay more, you may not only have them in con- 
junction, but the first ministering to the second — for there have 
been no greater haters of their fellow-men than those who have 
cherished such kind of love to God — but the true, the only genuine 
love to God, we cannot have, without its generating kindly and 
benevolent affections towards those who, equally with ourselves, are 
the objects of the divine regard. And, on the other hand, you may 
have a very ardent love to others apart from any deep love to God; 
but search its nature and mark its developments, and you will find 
that neither as to the objects it aims at, nor as to the boundaries 
it observes, does it come up to a faithful obedience to that require- 
ment which obliges us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. 

" On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." 
Love is the golden link that binds the whole together, and hangs the 
whole upon the throne of the Eternal. Love is the fulfilling of the 
law. No precept is or can be kept where it is wanting. If love be 
present, obedience is at once rendered easy, and gets the character 
that makes it pleasing in the sight of God. 

The scribe's reply to our Lord's answer shows how thoroughly he 
sympathized with it. He had admired the wisdom shown in Christ's 
dealing with other questioners. He admires still more the wisdom 
shown in the answer to his own question. It accords entirely with 
what, after much thought bestowed upon the matter, he had himself 
come to believe. "Well, Master, thou hast said the truth; for there 
is one God, and there is none other but he ; and to love him with aU 
the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and 
with all the strength, and to love his neighbor as himself, is more than 
;.ul whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices." The alacrity, the warmth, 
the vigor of this response, tell how intense the conviction was of which 
it was the utterance. Born and brought up though he had been in 
the very heart of a region where other and very different sentiments 
prevailed, he had come to see the comparative worthlessness of mere 
ceremonialism; that offerings and sacrifices were worse than idle 
forms, mere solemn mockeries of God, if that inner sentiment of the 
heart, whence only they could have life and value, were wanting; that 
the only true and animating principle of all piety towards God, and 
of all right conduct towards our fellow-men, was love; that as the 






THE LAWYER'S QUESTION. &U r i 

body without tlie spirit is dead, so all the mass of outward service 
without love was dead also. In our turn we wonder at the clear and 
just conception of the relative importance of the moral and the cere- 
monial, to which, placed as he had been, this man had reached. But 
far as he had got, he yet lacked one thing. He had ceased to put 
that value upon burnt-offerings and sacrifices that the mass of his 
countrymen did. His searching eye had seen through the hollowness 
of that external sanctimoniousness which was cultivated all around 
him with such sedulous care. But he had not yet come to see all 
that the first and greatest of the law's commands required, nor to feel 
how far short of its requirement his obedience had fallen. The hol- 
lowness of one way of attempting to obey it he fully saw, but the 
imperfections of that way which he had learned to put in its place, 
Its impotence to justify the sinner before the tribunal of the Most 
High, he had not perceived. He wanted the humble, broken, con- 
trite heart; and so Jesus says to him, "Thou art not far from the 
kingdom of God ;" not far from, but yet not in ; nearer by many a 
step than those who are going about in the rounds of a punctilious 
pietism to establish a righteousness of their own before God, but still 
not across the border-line which encompasses that kingdom which 
we must enter in the spirit of penitence and faith, as knowing and 
feeling that by the deeds of the law, how far soever our compliance 
with it be carried, no flesh living can be justified in the sight of God, 
Let the judgment passed upon this man's position by the unerring 
Judge proclaim to us the truth, that it is not enough to have made 
the discovery of the worthlessness of all service without love ; that to 
get into the kingdom the further discovery must be made, that in all 
things, and especially in that very love to God which primarily and 
above all is required of us, we come so miserably short, have so 
grievously offended, that our only resource is to throw ourselves upon 
the rich mercy of our God revealed in Jesus Christ. 

And was it not for the very purpose of turning the eyes of that 
scribe, the eyes of those who then stood around him, and the eyes of 
the men of all ages upon Himself, as the great revealer of the Father, 
that Jesus, having put all to silence, so that no man durst ask him 
any further question, in his turn becomes a questioner? The law and 
the prophets, whose sum and substance, so far as they were a code 
of duty, he had just declared, had something more in them than 
authoritative commands, were meant to accomplish other purposes 
besides that of making known to men their duty to God and to one 
another. There were promises and prophecies in them as well as 
precepts; prophecies and promises pointing to him by whom the law 



538 T.HE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

was to be magnified and made honorable. The law carried the gos- 
pel in its bosom. As to the one, the scribe put a question to Jesus 
which goes to the very heart of the matter: as to the other, Jesus, 
seeing the Pharisees gathered around him, puts a question to them 
which does the same. "What think ye," he says, "of Christ? whose 
son is he?" The answer springs at once to every lip. 

"Son of David" was the familiar, the favorite title, by which 
Christ, the expected Messiah, was known among them. When, 
amazed by his miracles, the people began to conjecture that he was 
indeed the Christ, they said to one another, " Is not this the son of 
David?" When the woman of Syrophoenicia, and the two blind beg- 
gars of Capernaum, Bartimeus of Jericho, and others, would express 
their faith in his Messiahship, they did it by saying, " Have mercy 
on us, thou son of David." When the multitude, translated for the 
time out of incredulity into belief, surrounded him on his late tri- 
umphal entry into Jerusalem, they exclaimed, " Hosanna to the son 
of David !" a salutation that the very children in the temple next 
day repeated — showing us how wide and general was the knowledge 
of this name. The answer then to Christ's first question is immedi- 
ate and unhesitating. Not so the answer to the second : " He saith 
unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, 
The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I mak? 
thine enemies thy footstool ? If David then call him Lord, how is 
he his son?" Jesus quotes here the first verse of the 110th Psalm, a 
psalm assumed by him and acknowledged by the Jews to have been 
written by David under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Two 
great personages appear in it, the one speaking of and to the other. 
It is with the high position, the complex character, the glorious des- 
tinies of the latter that the psalm is occupied throughout. Addressed 
by the highest of all epithets, he is introduced as sitting on the lofti- 
est of all elevations. His kingly power, his eternal priesthood, his 
vast and ever-widening sway, are successively sot forth. The Jews 
admitted that these were prophecies touching the Messiah. But 
between them and any right apprehension of the true character 01 
the spiritual rule and empire of that Messiah there hung an obscuring 
mist. The bright and gorgeous vision that had floated for ages 
before the eyes of the Jewish people was that of the future advent 
of a King who was to raise the Jewish commonwealth to supremacy 
fever the nations; the vision of an earthly, visible, world- wide mon- 
archy to be set up by the son of David; a vision which, as their 
affairs grew dark and desperate, and their national independence was 
more and more threatened, stood forth in brighter and brighter col- 






DAVID'S SON AND DAVID'S LORD. 539 

oring to gild the clouds that closed in darkness above their heads; a 
vision clung to with an enthusiastic devotion which ennobled them 
as a nation, and led on to the deeds of chivalrous heroism, which 
have crowned with glory their last wars with the Romans, but which 
sunk them into spiritual blindness, and kept them from understand- 
ing the very prophecies upon which it ostensibly was founded. It 
was this vision, baseless as it was bright, which Jesus seeks to dissi- 
pate by putting to them his pointed inquiry : ' If Christ be David's 
son, how could he at the same time be David's Lord ?' The true key 
to that announcement in the 110th Psalm, and to many similar proph- 
ecies, was wanting to the Jews so long as the true and proper divin- 
ity, as well as the true and proper humanity, of their Messiah re- 
mained unperceived and unacknowledged. 

How often and how strikingly does Holy Writ set forth the dou- 
ble, and as it might seem incongruous relationship of Christ to David, 
as being at once his son and his Sovereign, his successor and yet his 
Lord — set forth the singular, and as it might seem incompatible qual- 
ities or characteristics that belong to him ! " And there shall come 
forth," saith the prophet Isaiah, "a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and 
a Branch shall grow out of his roots." Isa. 11 : 1. He is the rod, 
the branch growing up out of, hanging upon, and supported by the 
parent stem. But anon the image changes, and the rod, the branch 
becomes the root by which the stem itself is supplied with nourish- 
ment and strength: "And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, 
which shall stand for an ensign of the people ; to it shall the Gentiles 
ssek: and his rest shall be glorious." Isa. 11:10 "Behold," saith 
Jeremiah, "the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto 
David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and 
shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah 
shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely ; and this is his name 
whereby he shall be called, The Lord our Righteousness." Jer. 
23 : b t o- Here, by an equal violence of figurative language, the 
helpless dependent branch turns into a king, and that king is eleva- 
ted, not to an earthly, but to the heavenly throne. Similarly in Zech- 
ariah: "Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, Behold the man 
whose name is The Branch; and he shall grow up out of his place, 
and he shall build the temple of the Lord: even he shall build the 
temple of the Lord; and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and 
rule upon his throne; and he shall be a priest upon his throne: and 
the counsel of peace shall be between them both." Zech. 6: 12, 13. 
Here, by a curious metamorphosis, the Branch first becomes the 
builder of a temple, then a ruler upon a throne, then a priest and 



540 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

king together, still upon the throne, establishing in that twofold 
capacity, or by the help of the twofold prerogatives of prince and priest, 
the counsel or covenant of peace for Israel. So is it in the ancient 
prophecies, and so is it also in the visions of the Apocalypse. What 
is the first vision that John gets of Jesus in the heavenly places? A 
door is opened in heaven, a throne is seen set there; the right hand 
of him who sits upon the throne holds out the book sealed with the 
seven seals. The strong angel proclaims with a loud voice, "Who 
is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof? " The 
challenge is made, resounds through heaven, remains unanswered. 
The apostle begins to weep because no man is found worthy to open 
and to read the book. One of the elders says to him, " Weep not; 
behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath pre- 
vailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof." John 
looks around for this opener coming, and lo! in the midst of the 
throne there stands a lamb as it had been slain, who takes the book 
and opens all its seals. He is told to look for a lion, and beheld a 
lamb. The lion and the lamb: the strongest and the fiercest, the 
weakest and the gentlest of animals; in Jesus the qualities of both 
appear, blended in singular yet most attractive combination. And 
in the last revelation of himself he makes to John, Jesus says, " I am 
the root and the offspring — the root and the branch — of David, and 
the bright and morning star." 

" What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? How can he be 
David's son and David's Lord? " These last words of our Lord's 
public ministry, which filled the temple courts of old, and found 
there no reply, are they not still going forth wherever the gospel of 
his grace is preached, waiting a response? Nor can any fit response 
be ever given till we see and be ready to acknowledge that in him, 
our Saviour, there meet and mingle all divine and human attributes — 
David's Lord in his divinity, David's son in his humanity; till we own 
him, and cleave to him, and hang upon him as at once our elder 
brother, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, and our Lord and 
our God; the morning star on the brow of our dark night, that heralds 
the bright, the cloudless, the unending day. 



WOES DENOUNCED DPON THE PHARISEES. 541 

VII. 

The Woes Denounced upon the Pharisees.* 

TUESDAY. 

Addressing himself specially to the Pharisees, Jesus asked them 
how Christ could be at once David's son and David's Lord ; and they 
stood mute before him. 

It is of this particular occasion that St. Mark says, "then the 
common people heard him gladly." They have been looking on and 
listening with intense curiosity — as well they might, for it is truly a 
marvellous scene that is before them. Here, on the one side, is one 
of themselves, an obscure Galilean, with no rank, or office, or acknowl- 
edged authority. There, on the other, stand the first men of the 
land, the chief of the priesthood, the heads of the scribes. It had 
long been known that the Pharisees repudiated and condemned the 
teaching of Christ. More recently their enmity had come to a head. 
They had even offered a reward for his apprehension. Now they 
meet him face to face in the most public place in all the city. Will 
they arrest him? will they order their officers to bind him and carry 
him off to prison? No: in presence of the people they will crush 
him with their words ; they will convict him of ignorance, or incom- 
petence, or sedition. And how shall this untaught, unfriended, un- 
protected man be able to stand against such odds ? One can well 
enough imagine that when the strange word-duel in the temple courts 
commenced, the sympathy of the people would be on Christ's side. 
Their sympathy deepens, wonder grows into admiration, as in each 
succeeding encounter he comes off more than conqueror, till at last 
his opponents stand silenced before him. Still, however, with all the 
wonder and all the admiration that Christ excites, other disturbing 
and perplexing emotions stir the breasts of the spectators : for those 
opponents of Jesus are the men to whom from infancy they have 
been taught to look up with unbounded reverence; to whose author- 
ity, especially in all matters of religious faith and practice, they have 
been accustomed implicitly to bow. The adversaries of Jesus have 
been baffled but not convinced; an unquenched, an intensified hatred 
to him is obviously burning within their breasts. How is it that none 
of their rulers will receive him, that almost to a man they are so bit- 
terly opposed to him? 

*Matt. 23; Mark 12: 38-40; Luke 20: 45-47. 



542 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. . 

May we not believe^that in its immediate and direct object, as 
addressed to the perplexed and excited crowd that then stood before 
and around him, the discourse recorded in the twenty-third chapter 
of St. Matthew was intended to take a stumbling-block out of their 
way, and by the bold and fearless exposure that it made of the char- 
acter and conduct of the Pharisees, to emancipate the people from 
that blind thraldom to their old religious leaders in which they had 
so long been held? But the discourse had a wider scope. It was 
our Lord's last day in the temple, his last time of openly addressing 
the people, the closing hour of his public ministry. This interest 
surrounds the words then spoken, that it was in them that his last 
farewell to the temple, his farewell to his countrymen was taken ; 
words not spoken for that audience only, words of solemn warning 
for his followers in all ages, for the men of every generation. Re- 
garding it in this light, without entering into any minute or consecu- 
tive exposition, let us offer one or two general reflections upon this 
discourse of our Saviour. 

1. It tells us what it was that chiefly kindled against it the burn- 
ing indignation of Jesus Christ. Against what are his terrible denuo* 
ciations pointed ? Not against either covert skepticism or open infi- 
delity. The Sadducees are here comparatively overlooked. Not 
against those sins, to which one or other of the passions and instincts 
of our nature prompt when allowed unbridled sway. A very singular 
and instructive contrast shows itself throughout his ministry between 
our Lord's treatment of that class of offences, and of the one which 
he here exposes. Compare, for instance, his treatment of the woman 
who had been a sinner, and of her to whom he said, "Neither do I 
condemn thee, go and sin no more," with his treatment of the 
haughty Pharisee at whose table he met the one, and of the double- 
hearted men who brought to him the other. It is among those 
making the largest professions of piety, priding themselves on 
their social position and the outward respectability of their lives, 
that Jesus discovers the materials for the severest denunciations 
that ever came from his lips. He finds these materials in that kind 
and form of religion which, under the guise of great fervor and 
zeal for the cause of God, beneath the large and broidered garment 
of a showy profession, gets ample room and opportunity for the 
indulgence of vanity and pride, the lordly, ambitious, despotic spirit; 
in that kind and form of religion that makes so much of the outward, 
the institutional, the ceremonial, so little of the moral, the spiritual, 
the practical; which exalts the letter above the spirit of the divine 
commands; which, finding this old precept of Moses, " Thou shalt 



WOES DENOUNCED UPON THE PHARISEES. 543 

bind these commandments of the Lord for a sign upon thy hand, 
and they shall be as a frontlet between thine eyes," thought that 
this command was kept by having strips of parchment with passages 
of Scripture on them bound upon the forehead and the arm, and 
fancied that the broader the parchment scrips, the more numerous 
the passages inscribed, the larger the honor and the service rendered 
unto God ; which, finding another old law of Moses, that no unclean 
animal should be eaten, strained every sort -of drink carefully through 
a linen cloth, lest any gnat or the smallest unclean animalcule might 
be drunk ; which, meeting with the ancient Mosaic order that a tithe 
of all produce should be offered to the Lord, was not content with 
presenting a tithe of the wheat, and the barley, and the oil, the 
common staple products of the land, but would give it of the mint, 
and the anise, and the cumin, the smallest garden fruits and flowers ; 
which invented nice casuistical distinctions among oaths, making out 
that some were binding, others not, some were sinful, others not; 
which, notwithstanding all its punctilious attention to the niinutias of 
certain outward observances, all its laborious cleansing of the out- 
side of the cup and the platter, was full within of extortion and 
excess— a very strange compound of very heterogeneous elements, 
distasteful to all true-hearted men, infinitely distasteful to our Lord 
and Master. We might have hoped that, with the departure of that 
old ritualism of Judaism, with the coming in of the simpler institute 
of Christianity, with the lessons and the life of our Lord himself 
before us, the temptation to and the opportunity for such singu- 
lar and such offensive development of human nature would depart. 
But no ; the spirit of Pharisaism lies deep in that nature ; deepest 
where the superstitious and devotional element is strong and the 
moral is comparatively weak, not peculiar to certain times and places, 
or to be seen only in certain churches under the drapery of ecclesi- 
astical ceremonialism kindred to that of the Jews. It is to be found 
everywhere, under all forms of religious observance ; where it has 
the least natural aliment, making all the more of what it has — 
nay more, as if soured by its meagre diet, nowhere will you see a 
more odious and repulsive growth of it than in those verjr churches 
which have stripped themselves the barest of all forms and cere- 
monies. 

2. Let us notice the insidiousness and deceitfulness of that spirit 
of Pharisaism which in this discourse Christ so fully exposes and so 
heavily condemns. The men whom Christ had immediately in his 
eye, whose hollowness and falsity he dissects with so unsparing a 
hand, had a very different opinion of themselves from that which he 



544 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

expresses. Tbey believed themselves to be really tiie most religious 
people in their own country — in the world. There may have been a 
few of fhem utter and arrant hypocrites, who knew themselves to be 
mere pretenders, with whom all the show of devotion was intention- 
ally and consciously assumed for selfish and sinister purposes. But 
we should err egregiously if we thought that such was the character 
of the majority. They imagined themselves to be sincere, and it was 
that imagination which was at the bottom of their intense self-satis- 
faction, their eager and ostentatious displays. Self-deception went 
so far with them that they actually believed themselves to be the 
natural successors and representatives of the prophets and righteous 
men of the old economy. The memory of their martyred forefathers 
was so dear to them, that they built their tombs and garnished their 
sepulchres, and said to one another, "If we had lived in those old 
times, we should not have been partakers with those who shed their 
blood." Yet at this very time they are meditating the death of 
Jesus — are about to imbrue their hands in the blood of God's own 
Son. Extraordinary instance, you may say, of self-deception. You 
would not think so if the eye of Omniscience were for a moment 
lent, and it was given to you to discern how many there are present- 
ly alive — busy, bustling, pretentious religionists, builders of prophets' 
tombs, garnishers of martyrs' sepulchres, the readiest to say, " Had 
we lived in the days of those odious Pharisees, we had been no par- 
takers of their guilt" ; who, if subjected to the same kind of test with 
the Pharisees — these tests altered according to the changes that the 
world since then has undergone — would do their deed over again — 
in the spirit, if not in the letter, would crucify Christ afresh. Among 
all the spirits that have ever entered into and taken possession of 
owr nature, there is not one of such self-deceiving power as that of 
Pharisaism. 

3. You have a striking instance brought before you in this dis- 
course of a nation being reckoned with not individually but collec- 
tively. The generation in which J^esus lived had sins enough of its 
own to answer for. Had there stood against it but that one charge 
of having despised, rejected, crucified the Lord, it had been enough 
But see how, in the spirit of sublime superiority to all selfish con- 
siderations, Jesus makes no mention here of the treatment given to 
himself. He looks backward, and lo! all the righteous blood that 
had been shed in the land lifts up its cry for vengeance! He looks 
backward, and lo! in the hand of the Great Judge the cup of wrath 
is seen getting fuller and fuller as the guilt of generation after gene- 
ration is poured into it! He looks forward, and lo! the men of the 



WOES DENOUNCED UPON THE PHABISEES. 546 

generation then existing are beheld pouring the last drops into thai 
cop, and by doing so, about to bring down its whole contents upon 
their devoted heads! But in the brief prophecy of what remained 
still to be done ere the treasured wrath of heaven descended there is 
something altogether singular. It is not a bare foretelling of the 
future by a commissioned agent of heaven. The prophet here rises 
far above the rank of all who had gone before. He speaks as the 
prophets' King and Lord. A greater than all the prophets is here. 
"Behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes." Matt. 
23:34. Christ's feet are upon the pavement of the earthly temple, 
but he speaks as from the throne of heaven. Let those who deny 
the divinity of Jesus tell us with what propriety any mortal man — 
any, even the greatest of the prophets, could have spoken as he here 
does. The indirect, the incidental way in which he speaks, deepens 
the impression of his divinity. A vision of judgment is to be reveal- 
ed. As he reveals it, he almost unconsciously, as we might say, 
realizes his own position as the Judge. And assuming that he is so 
when he tells us of that generation being made to suffer as well for 
others' transgressions as their own, what answ r er shall be given to 
those who would challenge the principle and rectitude of this proce- 
dure, but this, 'Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ? ' All 
the length that we can here go, is to point to the thousand instances 
in God's ordinary providence in which the sins of fathers are visited 
upon their children, and to the many instances of human legislation 
and international action grounded upon the principle that a nation is 
not a set of isolated unconnected units, but a continuous corporate 
body, capable of contracting an obligation, and incurring a guilt that 
survives the existing generation. We do not say that the exemplifi- 
cation of it elsewhere in the arrangement of the divine providence, o* 
its embodiment by ourselves when we assume the office of adminis- 
trator or judge, carries with it the explanation of such a procedure 
as that announced here by Jesus Christ. We do not say that we 
have light enough to offer any sufficient vindication of it ; but most 
assuredly we have not light enough to repudiate or condemn. Nay 
more, we are convinced that when the great mystery of God's deal- 
ings with mankind shall stand revealed in their eternal issues, it will 
be seen that our separate individual interests, for weal or for woe, 
have been wisely and righteously interlapped with the merit and the 
guilt of others to a far larger extent than any of us are now prepared 
to believe. 

4. In this discourse, a phase of the character of Christ, and in 
him of God, is set before us, from which we ought not to avert our 

Life of Christ. 35 



546 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

eye. Christ's voice, as heard on earth, was not always one of gen- 
tleness and love. When occasion called for it, it could speak as the 
thunder speaks, in volumed terror. Never were severer epithets 
employed, never more terrible denunciations uttered, than those 
hurled at and heaped upon the heads of the Pharisees. Yet no 
mingling here of sinful human passion, of malice or revenge, no 
absence even of love. Has Jesus forgotten to be gracious? Are 
tenderness and compassion clean gone out of that most loving heart ? 
We cannot believe so for a moment. Then let us believe that the 
deep, the strong, the burning indignation that breaks out here has a 
place and power of its own in the bosom of our Lord, and dwells 
together in perfect harmony with the milder and gentler attributes of 
his nature. Lightning lurks amid the warm soft drops of the sum- 
mer shower ; a consuming fire may come out of the very heart of love. 
Christ is the world's great Saviour ; he is also the world's great Judge. 
It was as our Saviour he came down to this earth, and gentle and still 
indeed was the voice in which that office was discharged. He did 
not strive, nor cry, nor cause his voice to be heard in the streets ; but 
lest we should misinterpret, and imagine that his spirit was too soft 
ever to kindle into wrath, his hand too gentle to do other services 
than those of love, once and again, as here, he assumes the office of 
the Judge, and speaks with a startling sternness. He began his teach- 
ing on the mountain-side of Galilee ; he closed it in the courts of the 
temple at Jerusalem. Compare the two discourses, the Sermon on the 
Mount, this discourse in the temple : the one begins with blessings, the 
other begins and ends with rebuke ; the one pours its benedictions over 
the heads of the faithful, the other its maledictions over the heads of 
tho faithless; the seven woes of the one confront the seven beatitudes 
of the other. Or take for contrast Christ's farewell to his friends, and 
his farewell to his enemies : the one composed of words of comfort, 
closing in that sublime intercessory prayer which he left behind him 
as a type or specimen of his advocacy for us in the heavenly places ; 
the other composed throughout of terrible denunciations, types, and 
preludes of those awful judgments which in his judicial character he 
shall pronounce and execute upon the finally impenitent. And what 
does all this teach us but that the religion of Jesus Christ has a two- 
fold aspect ? It carries both the blessing and the curse in its bosom. 
If here it speaks peace, there it speaks terror ; if to some it has noth» 
ing but words of tenderness and encouragement, to others it has 
nothing but words of warning and of woe. It stands as the pillar 
oloud stood between the Egyptians and the Israelites — with a side o' 
glowing brightness and a side of overshadowing gloom. And yet, 



THE WIDOW'S MITE. 54*} 

let us not fail to notice, that after all it is not in tones of wrath that 
the last accents of this farewell of our Lord to his enemies fall upon 
our ear. The fire of righteous indignation that burns within him 
cannot but go forth. As flash after flash of the lightning it falls 
upon the hypocrite and false devotee. But under that fire the inner 
leart of Jesus at last dissolves into tenderness. Pity, infinite pity, 
pours her quenching tears upon it, and with another look and in 
altered tone, a look and tone in which the compassion of the God- 
head reveals itself, he exclaims, " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that 
killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how 
often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen 
gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not !" 'I 
would, but ye would not.' The willingness is all with him, the un- 
willingness with us. May the very thought of this take our unwilling- 
ness away; that at the last our house be not left desolate, that it be 
no other than the home that he hath prepared for all who love him. 



VIII. 

The Widow's Mite — Certain Greeks Desire to see 

Jesus.* 

TUESDAY. 

His terrible denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees having been 
delivered, Jesus passes into a court of the temple, the innermost to 
which they were admitted, called therefore the Court of the Women. 
On one side of this court stood the thirteen large chests, with open- 
ings shaped like trumpets, into which the free-will offerings of the 
people were thrown. Over against them Jesus seats himself, watch- 
ing the passers-by. He sees many rich approach, and throw in, per- 
haps ostentatiously, their large contributions, but he does not make 
any comment on their gifts. At last, however, a poor woman ap- 
proaches the place of deposit. Modestly, timidly, almost furtively, 
as if ashamed of being seen, and hiding what she gives, as all too 
small for public notice, she casts her farthing in, and is in haste to 
depart. See how the eye of the watcher fastens upon this woman. 
She is retreating in haste to hide herself in the crowd without ; but 
she must not go till other eyes than those of Jesus have also been 
turned upon her. " He calls to him his disciples ;" he bids thera 
mark her well ; and as their eyes are all upon her, he says to them, 
* Mark 12 : 41-44 ; Luke 21 : 1-4 ; John 12 : 20-36. 



518 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

" Verily I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast more in than 
they all." 

How many were there in Jerusalem, who, if their attention had 
been directed to the poor widow's act, and it had been told them that 
in giving these two mites she had cast in her all, would have con-. 
demned that act ! What was cast into the treasury went either to 
the poor or to the priests, to the relief of the indigent or the uphold- 
ing of the worship of the temple. But were there many poorer in all 
the city than the poor widow herself? Should she not have kept the 
little which she had for the relieving of her own wants ? As to the 
priests and the temple, a large enough provision was made for them 
by public and private charity, without her being asked to add her 
trifling contribution. Who could tell, when it came into their hands, 
what these well-fed priests would do with her two mites ? And even 
if she had a better security that her donation would be well applied, 
what need was there to give what was so much to her and what was 
so little to them? How many sayings of this kind might her act 
have called forth ! and for one that might have praised, probably 
there would have been ten who would have condemned. But other 
eyes than those of a mere earthly prudence are on her, and another 
and very different sentence than one of condemnation is passed 
Broad and deep in that poor widow's heart had the love of the God 
who was worshipped within that temple been shed. There, by the 
post of these gates, she had often waited and worshipped, and there, 
in her hours of sorrow, in that worship her burdened spirit had got 
relief. She would answer to the call that she knew that the Lord of 
that temple had given, to aid in the maintenance of its services. It 
was a debt of gratitude that she owed ; it was a privilege to take any 
share in such a work. True, it was but the veriest trifle that she 
could afford; but it was willingly and gladly given. She would not 
have liked that any of those rich people, who were throwing in their 
silver and their gold as they went by, had seen her two mites drop 
out of her fingers. But there were eyes from which she could not 
hide them ; and little as she thought of it, there was one across the 
court sitting in judgment upon her, who not only approved her deed, 
but elevated her above all the donors of the day. She is not only 
the greatest giver of them all, she has cast in more than they all 
together — more, not in money value, but in moral worth. And what 
else, by giving such world-wide circulation to this her act, and this 
his sentence on it, did Jesus mean, than to give a world-wide circu- 
lation to the truth, that in his sight, in his Father's sight, it is the 
motive which gives its true cnaracter to the act; that greatness in 



THE WIDOW'S MITE. 54:9 

his estimate of things consists not in the doing of great acts that 
every eye must see, and that every tongue may be ready to praise, 
but iu doing what may be little things — so small that they shall 
escape all human notice, and so insignificant that there may be none 
to think them worthy of any praise ; but doing them in a great spirit, 
from a great motive, for a great and noble and holy end? He is not 
Ihe largest giver who, out of his abundance, and from many mixed 
motives, gives to this charity or to that, but he who, impelled by the 
pure love of God, and the desire to help on a good object, gives in 
largest relative proportion out of the surplus that remains to him 
after his own and his family's wants have been provided for. 

We do not know the circumstances otherwise of this poor widow. 
Let us assume that these two mites were all she had after her per- 
sonal wants had been satisfied. Let us assume that, slender as her 
income may have been, yet, like all the poor in the land of Israel, she 
had some such slender income upon which she could count. We 
cannot believe that if by casting these two mites in the treasury she 
actually made herself a pauper, with nothing thereafter but the cas- 
ual and uncertain charity of others to depend on, that our Lord 
would have approved of the act. Assuming then that it was her all, 
in the sense of being her all that was left after the provision of her 
)wn immediate wants, that she bestowed upon the temple treasury ; 
assuming also that all those rich people who went before and who 
followed her, in the first instance appropriated of their incomes what 
was needful to maintain them in the different grades of society in 
which they respectively were placed; let us ask ourselves, if the scale 
of giving on which she acted had been universally adopted, what 
would the revenue of that temple have been ? We imagine that the 
woman had no family; we imagine that she had none naturally claim- 
ing a provision at her hands ; we imagine that that treasury of the 
temple was the one great channel through which her charity flowed. 
It would be wrong indeed in such a state of things as that in the 
midst of which our lot is cast, to turn her act into a precedent, for 
any one object of Christian or common charity to claim the entire 
surplus that any one, rich or poor, among us may possess. But 
surely, all due limitations and exceptions made, there is something in 
the example thus held out which it becomes us to imitate; and we 
shall miss at least one great lesson which it gives if we fail to per- 
sei ve how right a thing it is that this burden of giving should be 
equally and proportionally borne; knowing that our gifts are all 
accepted, not according to what a man hath not, but according to 
what every man has. The lesson which, above all others, and in all 



560 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

departments of benevolent effort, we most need to have impressed on 
us, is the duty of sharing honorably and equally every burden that 
Christianity imposes. 

The time and circumstances under which the approving verdict 
was passed upon the widow's offering enhance its interest. Woe 
after woe, in tones of terrible impressiveness, have pealed like vol- 
leyed thunder over the heads of his adversaries, and are still echoing 
in the courts of the temple. As if to show how quickly and fully the 
strong emotions of righteous indignation have passed out of his 
breast, he sits quietly down in the attitude of an unoccupied obser- 
ver, all trace of anger gone from his countenance, all tones of anger 
from his voice, and asks his disciples to notice the poor widow's act. 

But there was another and still more interesting exhibition of the 
state of our Lord's thoughts and feelings as he took his farewell of 
the temple. It is the high prerogative of genius to be able vividly to 
realize and represent the thoughts, and sentiments, and words appro- 
priate to all kinds of characters, in all varieties of positions. Who 
that has read the pages of our great English dramatist has not 
remarked how true to nature each representation is, whether it be 
monarch on the throne or clown in the closet, statesman, warrior, 
prelate, or peasant that appears, and speaks, and acts ? It is by the 
exercise of this great faculty that the personages and events of the 
past are reproduced and set forth before our eye. There is one 
Being, however, who appeared upon the stage of time, who stands 
beyond the reach of this faculty ; for, be his genius what it may, who 
shall put himself in the place, or think the thoughts, or enter into 
the emotions of the Son of God as he passed through his earthly 
sojourn ? And yet how natural the desire to know the thoughts awa- 
kened in his mind, the emotions kindled in his heart, by the incidents 
through which he passed, the individuals with whom he was thrown 
into contact ? Here, however, imagination is at fault. Conscious of 
its incapacity, it reverently withdraws from the attempt either to con- 
ceive or to express how Jesus was affected by the varying events of 
his earthly pilgrimage. We cannot, dare not go here beyond what is 
revealed. And that is but little. No reader of the gospels can fail 
to have noticed how seldom it is that Christ gives us any glimpse of 
what was passing in the interior of his own spirit. With all the 
greater interest do we ponder over the few occasions in which the 
mantle that was ordinarily so closely drawn round its inner shrine ifl 
partially uplifted. Such is the interest which attaches to that pas- 
sage of his life which now comes under our review. 

As Jesus is sitting over against the treasury, Andrew and Philip 



^ 



CEKTAIN GKEEKS DESIKE TO SEE JESUS. 651 

come and tell him that in the outer court of the Gentiles certain 
Greeks are standing, who have expressed a strong desire to see him. 
Bom and brought up as heathen men, they had been so far con- 
vinced of the superiority of the Jewish faith, that they were in the 
habit of coming up to Jerusalem to worship there the one living and 
true God. Whether they had seen or heard much or anything of 
Jesus before this time, and what it was which inspired them with such 
a strong desire to see him now, we do not know. This may have 
been their first visit to Jerusalem. Their earliest knowledge of Christ 
may have been derived from what they had witnessed within the last 
few days. They must have heard of the raising of Lazarus and the 
many miracles which had previously been wrought. They must have 
seen our Lord's triumphal entry into the city, and noticed how the 
whole community had been moved. The cleansing of the temple 
must have made a deep impression on their minds. It was the court 
of the Gentiles, the very part of the temple appropriated to the use 
of that class to which they belonged, which Jesus had sought to 
cleanse from its impurities and profanations. Let us imagine that 
those devout Greeks had themselves been scandalized by seeing the 
place consecrated to worship turned into a common market ground, 
by seeing the priesthood more eager to make money than to win 
Gentiles to their faith. Here, however, is one man, a Jew, animated 
by something like the right spirit, who drives out these buyers and 
sellers, wiiose aim and effort is that this place be made what it was 
meant to be, a house of prayer for all nations. Who can this Jesus 
be ? He calls the temple his own house. He speaks of God as his 
own Father. The chief priests and rulers are angry at him; have 
even put a price upon his head ; have given orders that if any man 
knew where he was, he should tell, in order that he might be taken 
and put to death. Yet he walks openly in the midst ; the people 
gaze on him with wonder ; the very children hail him with hosannas 
as the Son of David. Who, those strangers ask again, can this Jesus 
be ? In their curiosity they come to Philip, a Galilean, a native of 
Bethsaida, one who knows their language, with whom they may have 
had some previous acquaintance, or they come to him because he is 
the one nearest them at the time, with whom they can most readily 
communicate, and they say to him : " Sir, we would see Jesus." Philip 
tells Andrew ; Philip and Andrew, the Greeks in all likelihood follow- 
ing them, tell Jesus. He has many around him when this message is 
conveyed to him, and the disciples and the Greeks stand waiting tka 
result. He gives no direct or immediate answer. He stands a mo- 
ment, lost in thought, and then breaks out into expressions, vagae 



552 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

and dark enough to those who listened to them at the time, jet full 
of the richest meaning, and conveying, too, though neither the Greeks 
nor the disciples, nor any of those around, may have seen then how 
it was so, one of the best answers to the request which had just been 
made. 

To understand this, let us remember that Jesus knew from the 
beginning what was to be the broad issue of his mission to tnis earth. 
The words of the Father, spoken of old by the prophet, were familiar 
to his ear : "It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to 
restore the preserved of Israel. I will give thee to be a light to the 
Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation to the ends of the earth : 
a light to lighten the Gentiles, as well as the glor}*- of my people 
Israel." Knowing this, familiar with this from the beginning as the 
end and object of his incarnation, one cannot help believing that the 
narrowness of the bounds within which his personal ministry was 
confined, and the smallness of the results which, during its continu- 
ance, that ministry realized, were often as a heavy burden pressing 
upon the Kedeemer's spirit. A.s a son, indeed, he learned obedience; 
he willingly submitted to the restraints laid on him; he cheerfully 
conformed to the will of Him that sent him, and expended his per- 
ional labors upon the lost sheep of the house of Israel — but not with- 
out many an inward thought of the joy set before him, of the harvest 
yet to be gathered in, of the glory yet to be revealed — thoughts kept 
buried in his heart, not at first to be uttered, for who could under- 
stand or sympathize? But here, at last, on the very eve of his agony 
and death, these Greeks, these Gentiles, come desiring to see him. 
He hails them as the representatives of the vast community to which 
they belong. In their coming to him he sees the first-fruits of that 
rich harvest which the world in all its borders was to yield. The 
great future of the gospel times and ages, hidden from all others, 
brightens into its full glory before his eye. The time, he knows, is 
near — he takes this very message from these Greeks as the token ol 
its approach — when the mystery shall be revealed, and the middle 
wall of partition between Jew and Gentile shall be broken down, wide 
over all the earth the glad tidings of salvation in his name go forth, 
and men of all peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kindreds be 
gathered into that one fold, of which he is to be the Shepherd. But 
between the present and this great result there lay, now very near 
at hand, his own sufferings and death — the lifting of him upon that 
tross which is to serve as the great means of gathering all men unto 
him. 

Connecting thus, as was most natural, the petition of the Greeks 



CERTAIN GREEKS DESIRE TO SEE JESUS. 553 

with the gathering in of the Gentiles, and that gathering in with his 
own approaching death, Jesus answered and said : "The hour is come 
that the Son of man should be glorified. Yerily, I say unto you, 
Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, 
but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit." Take a single kernel of 
seed corn : there dwells within it the mysterious principle of life — the 
gift of the Creator that no man can bestow. Keep it above the ground, 
preserve it carefully from the touch of death and of corruption, it 
may abide for years, retaining its own vitality; but it so abides in 
solitary unfruitfulness — no life comes out of its life. Bury it, how- 
ever, beneath the sod; let it pass down into what becomes to it the 
realm of corruption and of death ; let it rot and die there : then from 
out that death the new life cometh — fresh, abounding, multiplying 
life. So it is, and so only, that it bringeth forth much fruit. And of 
the world's great spiritual harvest Jesus is the one seed-corn. He 
had the life in himself, and might have kept it for ever there. But to 
turn it into the source of life to others he too must obey the law of 
life, propagating itself and spreading abroad through death. He too 
must die, that by dying he may bring forth much fruit. 

The death of the Kedeemer stands by itself; in a manner peculiar 
to itself the source of spiritual life to all united to him by faith. And 
yet there is a sense, and that a most real and important one, in which 
what was true of the head is true also of all the members. They too 
must come under the operation of the great principle and law which 
brings life out of death. They too must die, as he their Saviour died ; 
must take up their cross in turn, and in self-denial and self-sacrifice 
bear it ; they must have a fellowship with his sufferings ; be planted 
^n the likeness of his death ; be crucified with Christ ; must fill up 
what remains of his sufferings for his body the church. "For," said 
Jesus, immediately after having spoken of his own death and its 
great issues, "he that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth 
his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal." "If any man 
serve me" — be willing to become like-minded, like-hearted with me, 
look to my death as not only the fountainhead of his own spiritual 
life, but the model after which the whole temper, frame, and spirit of 
his being is to be moulded, then, added Jesus — "let him follow me, 
and where I am there shall also my servant be ; if any man serve 
me, him will my Father honor." In the quick surrey of the future 
that now engages the Saviour's thoughts, he sees beyond his death, 
iealizes his position as exalted to the Father's right hand in the 
heavenly places — the shame and the dishonor, the buffeting and the 
scourging, the agony and the dying, exchanged for the glory he had 



f 

554 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

with tlie Father before the world was. A kindred elevation and like 
honors awaited all who took up their cross daily, and in self-denial 
and self-sacrifice bore it ; sufferers with him here, thej would be glo- 
rified with hiro hereafter. 

Such as I have thus tried to trace it was the current of thought 
~„m cing through the first utterances of Jesus, given in answer to the 
announcement that certain Greeks stood without desiring to see him* 
But now a sudden change comes over the spirit of the Eedeemer. 
His eye closes on the crowd around; he ceases to think of, to speak 
with man; he is alone with the Father. A dark cloud descends and 
wraps him in its folds ; he fears as he enters into this cloud. From 
the midst of its thick darkness a trembling agitated voice is heard 
telling of a spirit sorely troubled within. Those of you who have 
watched by the bed of the dying must often have noticed how as the 
great event drew near foreshadowings of it came at measured inter- 
vals — a struggle, a faintness, a pallor so like the last that you held 
your breath as thinking that the spirit was about to pass. Death 
often throws such shadows of itself before, and the greatest of all 
deaths, the death of the Son of God, was also thus prefigured. The 
agony of the garden, what was it ? It was but the spiritual anguish 
of the cross let down beforehand upon the soul of the Eedeemer. 
The inward agony that wrung from the lips of the dying Jesus the 
bitter cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" was the 
same in source, in character, in object, with that which forced the 
thrice repeated prayer, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass 
from me." And the closing sentence of Gethsemane, "Not my will, O 
God ; thy will be done," is it not a softened echo of the last and loud 
triumphant exclamations, "It is finished. Father, into thy hands I 
commit my spirit"? Still more striking, however, is the likeness be- 
tween what took place visibly, audibly here within the temple, and 
what happened two days afterwards in the solitude of the garden. 
The correspondence is too close to be overlooked. You have in each 
oase the struggle, the prayer, the triumph, following each other in 
the same order. "My soul," said Jesus to the three disciples as he 
passed into the interior of the garden, "is exceeding sorrowful, even 
unto death." "Now," in the hearing of the company within the temple, 
he said, "now is my soul troubled." " O my Father, if it be possible, 
let this cup pass from me," is the prayer in the one case; "Father, 
save me from this hour," the prayer in the other. And the conflict is 
hushed, and the troubled spirit sinks to rest in the one case, saying, 
" Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt ;" and in the other, " Bui 
for this cause came I unto this hour ; Father, glorify thy name." 



CERTAIN GREEKS DESIRE TO SEE JESUS. 555 

"Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glori- 
fied it, and will glorify it again." Twice before — at the baptism in 
the Jordan, and the transfiguration on the mount — the same voice 
had been heard. But this third instance has more of publicity, if not 
of solemnity, attending it. At the baptism there were few pros 
£nt, and we may reasonably doubt whether any but John and Jesus 
saw the descending dove, and heard the voice from heaven. At the 
transfiguration there were present only the chosen three ; but here, 
in the temple, before a listening crowd, in answer to a public and 
solemn appeal, this voice gives its crowning accrediting testimony. 

This testimony given, the cloud disperses, the divine colloquy be- 
tween the Son and the Father ceases. Christ's thoughts return to 
earth, to flow once more along the channel into which the applica- 
tion of the Greeks had led them. First he turns aside for a moment 
to correct the misapprehension of some of the spectators. It had 
been here as it was on the occasion of Paul's conversion on his way 
to Damascus. Some had heard but a confused noise, and would have 
it that it was nothing more than a common peal of thunder that had 
sounded above their heads; others had made out that it was a voice, 
but not catching the words, or not entering into their meaning, would 
have it that it was an angel that in some unknown tongue had been 
addressing him. Jesus tells them that it was indeed a voice which 
they had heard, and that it had spoken not so much on his account 
as on theirs. Then, taking up once more the idea which runs as a 
connecting link through the whole of this passage, that the time had 
come for the completion of his great work, and the gathering up of 
its fruits, his eye glances over the whole realm of heathendom ; he 
sees that vast domain given over to the great usurper, the prince of 
this world, the spirit of unrighteousness sitting in the high places 
and exercising an unhallowed supremacy. The time had come, how- 
ever, for a world given over to wickedness to be judged, and for the 
usurper, who had so long held dominion over it, to be cast out. But 
how, and by what instrument? Not by might nor by power; not by 
bolts of vengeance flung at the ungodly; not by the hand of violence 
laid upon the usurper, and he dragged off with chains of iron bind- 
ing him ; no, but by another power mightier than his, drawing men 
away from him, dissolving their allegiance to him, linking them in 
love to God. "And I," said Jesus, "if I be lifted up, will draw all 
men unto me." 

Such, as foreseen and pre-announced by our Lord himself, was to 
be the effect of his crucifixion. It was to clothe him with a power 
over the spirits of men, unlimited in its range, omnipotent in its h> 



550 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

fluence, designed and fitted to exert its benignant sway as widely as 
the human family is scattered. From the time that he was lifted up, 
by his cross, its triumphs and its attractions, by all that it so willingly 
holds out for their acceptance and for their imitation, Jesus has been 
bringing all men to him — men of every age, of every country, of 
every character, of every condition ; the wise and the simple, the rich 
and the poor, the honored and the despised, Jews, Greeks, barba- 
rians, Scythians, bond and free. He puts this cross into our hands; 
he bids us lift it up, he bids us carry it abroad. Ours the outward 
work of letting all men know and see who it was that died for them 
on Calvary, and what it was that by dying for them he has done. 
His the inward power to work upon the heart, and by that charm 
which neither space nor time can ever weaken, to win it to peace, to 
love, to holiness, to heaven. 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 



After the full, strenuous day of controversy in the temple which 
closed Christ's public ministry, and after he had borne final witness 
to the national authorities, he retires, about sunset of Tuesday, with 
his apostles to the Mount of Olives. He may have gazed at the temple 
with a certain lingering look of interest as he was about to leave it, 
calling forth from some of his company the remark, " Master, see w T hat 
manner of stones and what buildings are here." These words draw 
from Christ the distinct declaration of the destruction of the build- 
ing so that there should not be left " one stone upon another " that 
should not be thrown down. 

When they are seated on Mt. Olivet, gazing at the temple and 
across the city bathed in the sunset rays, four, of the apostles, having 
in mind his last words concerning the temple, approach Christ and 
ask, " Tell us, when shall these things be? and w T hat shall be the sign 
of thy coming and of the end of the world?" 

Looking at the reply of Christ as given in the 24th and 25th chapters 
of Matthew, it is thought that there are three main ideas: his coming 
in the destruction of Jerusalem, with its precedent portents and accom- 
panying horrors; then, past a hidden valley or period of history, the 
summit of another advent- judgment of the Lord; and probably beyond 
a still wider valley or stretch of time, the final coming of Christ at the 
end of the world and for the general judgment of mankind. Through 
all his statements runs a golden line of words showing Christ's tender 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 55Ga 

care for and direction of his followers amid the distresses of these 
crisis times. 

There are two virtues which are especially requisite to the success 
of Christ's disciples — watchfulness and diligence; and our Lord pic- 
tures the first in the parable of the Ten Virgins, and the second in that 
of the Talents. 

Our Lord then closes his discourses for this eventful day and evening 
with a picture of the general judgment. Passing by the outward or 
material setting of this stupendous scene, each reader and student may 
fix his thought upon the one essential test designated by the words 
of Christ as that which will mark those upon the right hand of the 
King. It is feeding the hungry, entertaining the stranger, clothing the 
naked, visiting those that are sick or in prison. He who does this 
because the spirit of Jesus is implanted in his own soul, and he then 
goes forth to minister to all who need, will find in that day that he has 
really ministered to Christ in the persons of his needy brethren and sis- 
ters. The ministering is not the basis of merit, but rather the spirit 
of ministry, and this is created or enkindled by Christ in the souL 
Where this exists, there will be the power to see some capacity for 
eternal life, some element of nobility, some lineaments of the Lord 
in every individual. It is this faith in the salvability of men that 
makes their actual salvation possible. Christ himself possessed it; 
therefore he could make of wavering Simon the son of Jonas the rock- 
like Peter, of the selfish Levi sitting at the receipt of custom the bountiful 
apostolic Matthew, of the doubting Thomas the one who could wor- 
shipfully cry, " My Lord and my God," of Mary of Magdala, in whom 
were seven devils, the rapt saint who was the first to see him after his 
resurrection with the joyful word, " Rabboni." 

PART IV. PASSION WEEK TO GETHSEMANE. 
Study 18. Prophetic Instructions to the Apostles. 

(1) From the Temple to Mt. Olivet 5566, 557 

a. Christ leaves the temple as a victor ..'.., 5566 

b. The apostles call attention to the building 557 

c. Jesus announces its coming complete destruction 557 

d. They proceed to the western slope of Mt. Olivet 557 

(2) Threefold question of the apostles 557, 558 

a. " When shall these things be? " 557 

b. " What shall be the sign of thy coming? " 557 

c. " What shall be the sign of the end of the world? " 557 

d. Confusion and difficulty of the three points , 558 

(3) Christ's answer to the question 558-570 

a. There appear to be three advents of Christ referred to 558, 559 

b. Warning, directions, and consolations to his followers 560-564 

c. The first coming of Christ is in the destruction of Jerusalem 564 



5566 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

d. The second coming of Christ in his kingdom and glory, and the third 
at the end of the world, are not clearly distinguished from each 
other . . 564-570 

(4) The parable of the Ten Virgins 570-578 

a. Jewish marriage customs and our Lord's parabolic language 570-573 

b. The ten virgins represent professed disciples of Christ 573 

c. The foolish virgins represent those whose profession is unreal. . . . 574-578 

(5) The parable of the Talents 579-588 

a. Can be distinguished from that of the Pounds 579-581 

b. But their lessons are much the same 581 

c. The ideal of complete service 581-583 

d. The reward of service is the privilege of greater service 583-588 

(6) Picture of the final general judgment 588-603 

a. .Features of the scene described 588-596 

b. The elements represent reality 595 

c. The character and deeds approved spring from love to and likeness 

to Christ 597-603 



IX. 

The Prophecies of the Mount.* 

TUESDAY. 

The stormy collision between Christ and the chief priests at 
length was over. Jesus, calling the twelve around him, left that 
court of the temple in which the conflict had been carried on, not as 
one defeated or driven away by his adversaries, but clearly and avow- 
edly as the victor. It looks, from the two incidents which followed, 
as if Jesus, his public teaching in the temple over, lingered yet a 
little while reluctant to take what he knew would be his last sight of 
its sacred interior. At last, however, sadly and slowly he departs. 
There was perhaps something marked and noticeable in the earnest 
looks Jesus was bestowing on the buildings. There had certainly 
been much in what they had just seen and heard to excite the atten- 
tion of his disciples. Those last words of his address to the Phari- 
sees ring heavily in their ears — "Behold, your house is left unto you 
desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye 
shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." What 
house is to be left so desolate ? Is it this very temple in which they 
stand? What kind of desolation is to overtake that house? Is it 
Indeed, as some words of their Master, spoken long before this time, 

* Matt. 24, 25 ; Mark 13 ; Luke 21 : 5-36. 



THE PROPHECIES OF THE MOUNT. 557 

might seem to imply, to be destroyed ? A dark foreboding of some 
awful catastrophe hanging over that sacred pile is upon their spirits ; 
and one of them giving vague expression to the common feeling, and 
with some dim hope that something further, clearer, may be told, 
said, "Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are 
here!" "See ye not," is our Lord's reply, "all these things? verily 1 
say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, 
that shall not be thrown down." Distinct and unambiguous an- 
nouncement! One cloud of obscurity at least is rolled away. The 
solid, stately, sumptuous fabric on which all their eyes are fastened 
is to perish, from its very foundation to be overturned. But though 
this fact be thus made certain, how many questions as to the time, 
the manner, the causes, the consequences of it, would at once arise to 
trouble the disciples' mind. Their Master, however, is already on his 
way to the gate which leads out to Bethany, and they follow. Silent 
all and thoughtful they follow him ; they descend into the valley of 
Jehoshaphat, cross the Kedron, begin the ascent of Olivet, have 
reached a height which commands the city, where Jesus pauses and 
sits down — as that accurate narrator Mark informs us, "over against 
the temple." It must have been near the very spot where, two or 
three days before, Jesus had beheld the city and wept over it, and 
through his tears had seen that sad vision of Jerusalem beleagured^ 
and her enemies casting a trench around her, and compassing her 
about, and keeping her on every side, and laying her even with tho 
ground, and leaving not one stone upon another. As Jesus and his 
disciples sat down upon the ridge of Olivet, the eyes of all would rest 
upon the sumptuous edifice before them there, across the valley, 
glowing now beneath the beams of the setting sun. The quiet spot, 
the evening hour, the serene attitude, his words so lately spoken, all 
conspire to draw the disciples' thoughts upon the dark and doubtful 
future. Gently approaching him, Peter and James and John and 
Andrew put to Christ' the question, "Tell us, when shall these things 
be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the 
world?" 

It is of the utmost importance, as throwing light upon the whole 
structure and meaning of Christ's answer, that we look into the in- 
quiry to which it was a response. Taking up that inquiry with the 
information which we now possess, we should say that it referred to 
three distinct and separate events : 1. The destruction of the temple; 
2. The coming of Christ; 3. The end of the world. But the men 
who made that inquiry had no clear idea of these three events being 
distinct and separate from each other. They had heard their Master, 



558 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

and that very recently, speak of his impending sufferings and death, 
and of another coming of the Son of man, when he should be revealed 
in his glory. They had heard him say, "Verily I say unto you, There 
be some standing here which shall not taste death till they see the 
Son of man coming in his kingdom," What a mass of difficulties 
was here for these men with their existing beliefs to unravel! Christ's 
coming to his kingdom they had always looked forward to as the 
issue speedily to be realized, when he should ascend the throne of 
Israel and rule upon the earth as earth's acknowledged sovereign. 
But somehow, between them and that issue were interposed those 
sufferings and that death the object of which they could not compre- 
hend. They had always associated Christ's coming to his kingdom 
with the elevation of their country to the first place among the na- 
tions, and the restoring and purifying of their great sanctuary at Jeru- 
salem ; but now Jesus speaks of coming not to restore but to destroy. 
He tells them of a time when of all those great buildings of the 
temple not one stone should be left upon another. Was that to be at 
the time of his coming, and was the time of his coming to be the end 
of the world ? Imagining that it must be go, and yet unable to see 
how it could be so, incapable of dissociating the three events, yet 
unable to harmonize what had been said about each, they come 
with all their obscurity and confusion of thought to Jesus, and they 
nay to him, "Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be 
the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?" 

Look now at the reply of Jesus to this question, as given in the 
24th and 25th chapters of St. Matthew, and ask yourselves Iioav 
far did Jesus go in clearing away the doubts or misapprehensions 
which the complex question put to him involved. Did he at once, 
clearly and unambiguously, inform his disciples that the destruction 
of Jerusalem was at hand? that it would happen within the lifetime 
of men then living? Did he, separating between different future 
comings of his, some figurative, some personal, tell them that it 
was to his first figurative coming he had referred, when he said 
that there were some of those men standing before them who should 
witness it? Did he proceed to separate by a long interval of many 
centuries the coming to judge Jerusalem, from his coming to avenge 
his own elect, to gather them from the four winds of heaven, and 
set up his kingdom upon the earth? or did he separate again that 
personal advent at the beginning of the millennium, from the day 
of the world's final judgment, and the passing away of these heavens 
and this earth? So far from this, the prophetic discourse of our 
Lord is studiously and purposely so framed, that with no other 



THE PROPHECIES OF THE MOUNT. 559 

guidance than that which itself affords, we still might confound, as 
the disciples confounded, the three advents of our Lord. With the 
fulfilment of the first part in our hands, as an event long since gone 
by, we are able to mark the separating line which divides the first 
advent of Christ, that day of judgment of the Lord, from all others 
that are to follow. Had we, however, stood where the apostles 
did, had we had this great comprehensive draft or sketch of the 
future held up to our eyes, as it was to theirs, would it have been 
possible to discern even that dividing line? For how is this pro- 
phetic picture framed? Behind a foreground filled with signs and 
tokens of impending woes, there rises as the first summit of a moun- 
tain range the Lord's coming to visit Jerusalem in his anger ; then, 
right over that summit, almost on the same level, but dimmer, 
appearing to the eye quite close to it — the intervening valley quite 
hid from sight. — another summit is beheld, another judgment- advent 
of the Lord, a second, and, as many believe, even farther back, yet 
a third. What seems, however, especially to perplex the eye as it 
rests on this prophetic picture, is not only that events are brought 
close together which may be — some of which we now know are — 
actually distant from each other by many centuries; not only are 
marks and tokens of these intervening spaces wanting here, not 
only are all the events of the one class described in the same way, 
painted in the same colors, but each is used as typical of those 
which come behind, described accordingly in terms which appear 
to belong to its successor rather than to itself; and so it is that 
many readers have felt it to be impossible to determine of many of 
the sayings of the discourse, whether they are to be applied to the 
first or second or third advent of Christ. 

With these general observations, let us take up the discourse 
itself. It will be found that it divides itself into three parts, which 
on the whole correspond to the three inquiries which are virtually 
involved in the question of the disciples: the first part, from the 
beginning of the 24th chapter to its 29th verse, being occupied with 
the destruction of Jerusalem; the second, from the 29th verse of the 
24th chapter to the 30th verse of the 25th chapter, being occupied 
with the Lord's advent to establish and set up his kingdom upon 
the earth; and the third, from the 31st verse to the end of the 25th 
chapter, occupied with the final judgment and the end of the world, 
I shall have a word or two to say hereafter as to whether we should 
distinguish the second of these sections in any way from the third; 
whether there shall be any other future coming of Christ besides thu 
one when he shall come to close the present order of things Mean- 



560 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

while let us turn our thoughts to that portion, the easiest certainty 
to be understood, which sets forth the coming siege and ruin of the 
holy city. When shall these things be? when shall Jerusalem be 
destroyed? Jesus does not satisfy the curiosity that had respect 
alone to the date of the event, which would like to know how many 
years it would be till the ruin of their ancient city was accomplished: 
but he gives them, not one, but many signals of its approach. False 
Christs were to arise, there were to be wars and rumors of wars, 
and earthquakes in divers places, and famine and pestilence, and 
persecution of themselves. These, however, were to be but the 
beginning of sorrows ; they were to regard them as so many tokens 
that the end was drawing on. The ten verses from the 4th to the 
14th are occupied with the detail of these. All who have access 
to the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus, can easily satisfy 
themselves how fully and accurately all these tokens were verified 
during the years which lay between the ascension of Christ and 
the destruction of Jerusalem. 

Without referring to historic details, let me rather ask you to 
notice how Christ subordinates the prophetic intimations which he 
makes to the instructions, warnings, consolations with which he 
accompanies them. Does he speak of false Christs appearing ? he 
prefaces that prophecy by saying, " Take heed that no man deceive 
you." Does he speak of coming wars and rumors of wars? he adds, 
"See that ye be not troubled" Does he detail the sufferings to 
which his own followers during that interval are to be exposed? 
he follows it up by the assurance that he who shall endure to the 
end shall be saved. It was not so much to prove his prophetic 
power, not so much to gratify their desire that some pre-intimation 
of the approaching event should be given them, as to forewarn 
and forearm them against the spiritual dangers to which they were 
exposed, that Jesus entered on these details. 

Even here, however, in the first section — whose reference to the 
proximate event of the destruction of Jerusalem no one can doubt — 
we have instances of that double sense of the Lord's sayings, theii 
applying to the incident more immediately alluded to, yet carrying 
along with them an ulterior reference to the future and kindred one 
with which in the broad delineation it is conjoined. "He that 
endureth to the end shall be saved :" the primary signification here 
is, fhat he who, through all these seductive influences of false proph 
ets, through all these wars and rumors of wars, through all those 
fiery trials of persecution, should hold fast his fidelity, would .be 
delivered from that destruction which was to descend upon Jerusa- 



THE PROPHECIES OF THE MOUNT. 561 

iem; the secondary signification, one which extends to every period 
of the Church, and to every one who abideth faithful unto death, 
holds out in promise, the greater, the spiritual, the everlasting salva- 
tion. Again, the gospel of the kingdom shall be preached for a 
witness unto all nations. In their primary sense these words 
received their first fulfilment anterior to the destruction of Jeru- 
salem. "Their sound," says Paul, speaking of the first missionaries 
of the cross, "went unto all the earth, their words unto the ends 
of the world." In another epistle, he speaks of the gospel which 
the Colossians had heard, as preached to every creature which is 
under heaven. But in a wider and more strictly literal sense, before 
the final advent which the first symbolizes, there was to be a 
diffusion over all the earth of the knowledge of Christ — the two 
signs here given of Christ's coming to destroy Jerusalem, a general 
apostasy, the love of many waxing cold, and a widespread dissem- 
ination of the truth, being, as we know from the other parts of the 
discourse, the very signs by which the second advent of our Lord 
is to be preceded. 

But Jesus not only mentions certain signals by whose appearance 
they might be admonished that the great catastrophe was drawing 
on, he gives a token by which they might know when it was at the 
very door. He does this in order to dictate the course which they 
should then take in order to provide for their safety. "When ye 
shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the 
prophet standing where it ought not, in the holy place," etc. In 
St. Luke's gospel it stands, " When ye shall see Jerusalem com- 
passed with armies." When the two came into conjunction — the 
outward sign of the city being compassed about with armies — the 
inward one of some flagrant desecration of the holy place within 
the temple being perpetrated — they were to betake themselves to 
instant flight. And so great was the expedition they were to use, 
that he who was on the house-top was not to wait to come dows, 
by the inner stair to take anything out of the house, but, escaping 
even as he was, was to descend at once by the outer flight of stairs, 
which, in Jewish houses, led from the house-top to the street, and 
fly as for his life. We cannot now say decisively what the abomi- 
nation of desolation was ; doubtless it was recognized by those for 
whose benefit Christ's words were spoken. We know, however, that 
two years before the city was invested by Yespasian, a Koman army, 
under Cestius Gallus, approached and invested it. It strangely 
enough happened that as Titus surprised the city at the time of the 
passover, Cestius surprised it during the feast of tabernacles, when all 

U<o q( Chi-tot. 36 






562 THE LITE OF CHliJST. 

the male population of Judea was collected in tlie capital. As there 
can be little doubt that the Hebrew converts to Christianity con- 
tinued to observe the greater ceremonies of their ancient faith up 
to the time of the fall of Jerusalem, they too would be there along 
with the rest. They would see Jerusalem compassed with armies, 
and when, coincident with this there was some desecration of the 
holy place, they would know that the time for their flight had come. 
The siege by Cestius was sent as a warning to them, as the after 
siege was sent as a punishment to their unbelieving countrymen. 
It occurred in the month of October, one of the mildest in the 
Jewish year. Their flight, therefore, was not in the winter. It has 
been proved that the day on which Cestius unexpectedly, and in 
a panic which never could be accounted for, suddenly called off his 
troops, and entirely retreated from the city, was a Tuesday. Their 
flight, therefore, was not upon the Sabbath. Our Saviour's direction 
that they should pray that neither of these two things should 
happen to them, what was it but a prayer on his part that they 
should be exposed to neither of these calamities in their flight? 
a prayer which in mercy was granted. 

" For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the 
beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be." Matt. 
24:21. The history of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem is a 
dark picture of horrors, illumined by most extraordinary displays 
of heroism. I do not know whether we are to receive the words of 
Jesus in describing it as if they were to be exactly and literally 
verified, or whether we are to take them, as we must take so many 
declarations of holy writ, as being true not so much in the letter as 
in the spirit. Certainly, however, neither before nor since have we 
read of so many men — upwards, Josephus tells us, of a million — 
perishing within a single city during its siege. Nor can a parallel 
easily be found to some of the horrible incidents realized within 
those beleaguered walls. Take, for instance, the description given 
by Dean Milman of the effects of the famine. I quote the passage, 
as containing not merely a fulfilment of this prophecy of Christ, but 
of another and still earlier prophecy of Moses : 

"Every kind feeling, love, respect, natural affection, were extinct 
through the all-absorbing want. Wives would snatch the last mor- 
sel from husbands, children from parents, mothers from children. . . . 
If a house was closed, they supposed that eating was going on, and 
they burst in and squeezed the crumbs from the mouths and throats 
of those who were swallowing them. Old men were scourged till 
they surrendered the food to which then- hands clung desperately, 



THE PROPHECIES OF THE MOUNT. 563 

and even were dragged about by the hair till they gave up what 
they had. Children were seized as they hung upon the miserable 
morsels they had got, whirled around and dashed upon the pave- 
ment. Tortures which cannot be related with decency were em- 
ployed against those who had a loaf or a handful of barley. . . . 
The very dead were searched as though they might conceal some 
scrap of food. The most loathsome and disgusting food was sold 
at an enormous price. They gnawed their belts, shoes, and even 
the leather coats of their shields. Chopped hay and shoots of trees 
sold at high prices. Yet what were all these horrors to that which 
followed? There was a woman of Persea, from the village of Betb- 
ezob, Mary the daughter of Eleazer. She possessed considerable 
wealth when she took refuge in the city. Day after day she had 
been plundered by the robbers, whom she had provoked by her 
bitter imprecations. No one, however, would mercifully put an end 
to her misery, and, her mind maddened with wrong, her body preyed 
upon by famine, she wildly resolved on an expedient which might 
gratify at once her vengeance and her hunger. She had an infant 
that was vainly endeavoring to obtain some moisture from her dry 
bosom. She seized it, cooked it, ate one half and set the other 
half aside. The smoke and the smell of food quickly reached the 
robbers ; they forced her door, and with horrible threats commanded 
her to give up what she had been feasting on. She replied with 
horrible indifference that she had carefully reserved for her good 
friends a part of her meal. She uncovered the remains of her child. 
The savage men stood speechless, at which she cried out with a 
shrill voice, "Eat, for I have eaten; be not more delicate than a 
woman, more tender-hearted than a mother; or if ye are too religious 
to touch such food, I have eaten half already, leave me the rest." 
They retired, pale and trembling with horror. The story spread 
rapidly through the city, and reached the Roman camp, where it 
was first heard with incredulity, afterwards with the deepest com- 
miseration. How dreadfully must the words of Moses have forced 
themselves upon the minds of all those Jews who were not entirely 
unread in their holy writings: "The tender and delicate woman 
among you, who would not adventure the sole of her feet upon 
the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil 
towards the husband of her bosom, and towards her son, and 
towards her daughter, and towards her young one that cometh out 
from between her feet, and towards her children which she shall bear; 
for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly, in the siege and 
straitness wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates." 



564 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Such were the horrors from witnessing and sharing in which 
it was the benevolent intention of our Lord, by these prophecies, 
warnings, and directions, to shield the faithful few who should bear 
his name and profess his religion in the midst of their unbelieving 
countrymen. The care and foresight of their divine Master thus 
placed them on an eminence whence they might discern beforehand 
the gathering of the great storm, might quietly watch its gradual 
advances, and ere it burst upon their heads find safety in a timely 
flight. Nor was the solicitude of the Saviour expressed in vain. 
It has been a tradition of the Church from the earliest ages that 
not a single Christian Jew perished in the siege of Jerusalem. 
While we turn therefore to this discourse of our Redeemer, as pre- 
senting so striking a monument of his prescience, we turn to it with 
still greater pleasure as presenting a monument of that affectionate, 
foreseeing, providing love he bears to all his faithful followers. 
Neither shall any of these his little ones perish ; for them too, when 
straits and dangers press them round, the way of escape shall be 
opened. They shall lift up their eyes to the hills, whence cometh 
their aid. They shall dwell on high, and their place of defence shall 
be the munition of rocks. 






x. 

The Prophecies of the Mount.* 

TUESDAY. 

"Tell us," said his disciples to Jesus as they sat with him on 
the mount, "when shall these things be? and what shall be the 
sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world ?" Imagining that 
they would be nearly, if not altogether contemporaneous, they mixed 
lip all the three events : the destruction of Jerusal m, the coming 
of Christ in his kingdom and glory, and the end of the world. How 
easy it had been for Christ to have corrected their errors both 
as to events and dates, to have told them plainly and explicitly 
that the destruction of Jerusalem was to precede by many centuries 
his second coming and the end of the world. Instead of this be 
leaves their errors uncorrected, allows the confusion that was in 
their minds to remain. Nay more, in his reply he so speaks of 
his coming to judge the world as to make it impossible for his 
disciples at the time, and in the position they then occupied, to 

* Matt. 24 : 29-44 ; Mark 13 : 25-37 ; Luke 21 : 25-3fi 



THE PROPHECIES OF THE MOUNT. 666 

perceive that more than one such coming on his part was spoken of. 
With the siege and overthrow of Jerusalem behind us as an event 
long since gone by, we can understand the first part of our Lord's 
prophetic discourse delivered upon this occasion, and give to it its 
obvious and only possible application, by separating that first com- 
ing of Christ from all other after advents. But we stand to the 
remainder of the discourse very much in the same position in which 
the disciples first stood to the whole of it. And there is a question 
about that remainder which we now, I apprehend, are as little able 
yet to solve as the disciples upon Mount Olivet were able to con- 
clude, from what Christ then said, that the destruction of Jerusalem 
was nigh at hand, but that an interval of centuries stretched out 
between it and the next great coming of their Lord. 

The question to which I refer is this : Is there indicated in the 
yet unfulfilled part of this prophecy a middle coming of Christ — to 
be distinguished, on the one hand, from his coming to destroy Jeru- 
salem, and to be equally distinguished, on the other, from his coming 
at the close of the present economy of things to judge the world ? 
Many of our ablest expositors of Holy Writ believe that not only are 
traces to be discovered here of such an intermediate advent, ushering 
in the millennial reign, but that you cannot read this discourse con- 
secutively and intelligently without discerning and acknowledging it. 
Let me refer to one or two of the proofs which this portion of Scrip- 
ture, when compared with other parts of the prophetical writings, is 
supposed to supply in evidence of a coming of Christ anterior to and 
quite separate from his final coming to judge the world. In the 
twenty-ninth verse of the twenty-fourth chapter of St. Matthew's 
gospel, certain premonitory signals of an advent of the Lord are 
given. The sun is to be darkened, the moon is not to give her light, 
the stars are to fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens are 
to be shaken. The advocates of the personal and premillennial 
advent of our Lord think they can demonstrate that, according to the 
structure and style of language adopted in the prophetic Scriptures, 
these are symbolic descriptions of great commotions, changes, and 
revolutions, political and ecclesiastical, which are to happen on the 
earth. Other Scriptures about which there is less ambiguity ol 
meaning represent these as preceding the setting up of the visible, 
the millennial kingdom of our Lord on earth, an event carefully to 
be distinguished from the final judgment-advent. As the national 
find religious catastrophes here symbolized are spoken of in those 
other passages as taking place at some intermediate point along the 
line that stretches out into the future, and not at nor immediately 



5G6 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

neai the end of that line, so it is affirmed and believed that the com- 
ing of the Lord spoken of in the thirtieth, thirty-first, and immedi- 
ately following verses of the twenty-fourth chapter of St. Matthew's 
gospel, connected as it is with these catastrophes as its immediate 
precursors, cannot be the one with which the present state of things 
is finally to be wound up. 

Again, this coming of the Lord is said to be for the purpose, not 
of gathering all nations before him, but of gathering his own elect 
out of all the nations, from the four winds, from one end of heaven 
to the other. In this gathering two are to be working in one field — 
the one is to be taken, the other left ; tw r o are to be grinding at one 
mill — the one is to be taken, ti?e other left. The field then and the 
one reaper, the mill and the one grinder, are they not to be left, it is 
asked, as they were before? and is not this a description that applies 
far more naturally and truthfully to such a separation as would take 
place at the erection of the millennial kingdom than to the separation 
of the judgment-day? 

It is admitted that these and all the other like traces to be met 
here of a distinction between the second and third advents of our 
Lord are obscure ; but then we are reminded that this whole proph- 
ecy is constructed upon the principle of so blending together the 
events that it covers, and making them so overlap and run into one 
another, that a broader and more marked line of separation is not to 
be looked for. It is difficult for eyes untrained to the survey of 
mountainous districts to detect the line that separates a distant range 
of hills from a higher one lying immediately behind it. As difficult, 
it is alleged, for an eye unpractised in the survey of the perspective 
of prophecy, as presented in the pages of the Bible, to detect that 
line which separates the second from the third coming of our Lord. 
Nevertheless, the quick-sighted and w r ell-trained eye may in both 
cases be satisfied that it is a double and not a single object that is 
before it. In justice, besides, to the advocates of the premillennia] 
advent, it must be added that the Scripture now before us is not the 
one upon which they rely as supplying anything like distinct or pos- 
itive proof of such an advent. It would certainly need something 
much more definite than anything which meets us here to warrant 
the belief that such an advent is approaching. But if elsewhere in 
the Bible such positive proof exists, then it is alleged that the ren- 
dering of this prophetic discourse which represents it as portraying 
in regular sequence three judgment-comings of the Lord, opens up 
its meaning more fully, and gives greater order, consistency, and har* 
mony to it, as a whole, than an v other explanation supplies. 



THE PBOPHECIES OF THE MOUNT. 567 

It may be so; we are certainly not prepared to affirm or akempt 
to prove the opposite. In order, however, to arrive at any satisfac- 
tory conclusion on the subject, to pass a judgment on it entitled to 
any weight, one would require to have studied thoroughly and pa- 
tiently the whole circle of the prophetic writings, to have made him- 
self master of the peculiar kind of language, figurative and symboli- 
cal, which is there employed, and in particular to have candidly 
weighed and balanced the strangely conflicting testimonies that have 
been adduced in favor of and against the idea of a personal and pre- 
millennial advent of the Eedeemer. It so happens, however, that 
among those who have made this province of unfulfilled prophecy their 
peculiar study, the most various and the most discordant opinions 
prevail. They differ not only in their interpretation of individual 
prophecies, but in the systems or methods of interpretation that they 
employ. For some this region of biblical study has had a strange 
fascination, and once drawn into it there appears to be a great diffi- 
culty in getting out again. Perhaps the very dimness and doubtful- 
ness that belong to it constitute one of its attractions. The lights 
are but few, and straggling and obscure. Yet each new entrant fan- 
cies he has found the clue that leads through the labyrinth, and with 
a confidence proportioned to the difficulties he imagines he has over- 
come, would persuade us to accompany him. Instead of inclining us 
the more to enter, the very number and force of these conflicting 
invitations serve lather to repel. We become afraid of getting beneath 
a spell that somehow or other operates so powerfully, so engrossingly 
upon all who yield themselves to its influence. 

Apart, however, from any such timidity, (which would be censura- 
ble if the questions raised were ones that could be settled,) I cannot 
think that there are sufficient materials in our hands for arriving at 
any clear and definite conclusion as to the time and the manner of 
the yet future advents of Christ. Nay, more, I am convinced that it 
was never meant by the framer of the prophecies regarding them 
that any distinct vision of the future should, by help of them, be ob- 
tained by us. They are couched in the language peculiar to proph- 
ecy, of which this is a distinctive feature — that you cannot, by mere 
inspection, positively say whether each and every announcement is 
to be taken literally or figuratively; and if figuratively, how it is to 
be fulfilled. It is so far true that the part already accomplished does 
put into our hand a key, by help of which the part yet unaccomplished 
oia} ue partially understood. It is, however, but a little way that w* 
can be thus helped on; for the prophecies are not framed throughout 
after one uniform mould or pattern, so that if you can unlock one 



£68 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

portion, jou can unlock the whole. There is such variety of construc- 
tion in the different parts, that much must remain of double or doubt- 
ful import, till the interpreting event occurs. It has been so with all 
that section of the prophetic writings of which the fulfilments are 
already before our eyes. It must be so with all that lies over to be 
accomplished in the future. Who then shall tell us beforehand what 
18 to be taken literally and what figuratively ? In stating their case, 
fche advocates on either side, for and against the premillennial advent, 
adduce certain passages which, taken as plain historic statements of 
what is hereafter to occur in the history of our globe, appear un- 
doubtedly to prove what they are adduced to substantiate. But 
taken in the same way, passages are quoted on the other side which 
are in open conflict with these. The way in which either party 
attempts to remove the discordance is to assign a figurative sense to 
announcements which are at variance with those which they adopt as 
plain and simple narratives of what is to happen. All cannot be taken 
literally, neither can all be taken figuratively, without jars and dis- 
cords ; and take which side you may, it will be found that there are 
passages in such apparent and direct opposition to your conclusions, 
that you have to do violence to your own method of interpreting the 
others in order to get rid of their opposition. This is so unsatisfac- 
tory that on the whole we are not only disposed to hold our judgment 
in this matter in suspense, to wait till the event supplies the explana- 
tion, but we are inclined to believe that the obscurities and difficul- 
ties which now stand in the way of anything like a minute interpreta- 
tion of the prophecies beforehand, were intentionally, and of set pur- 
pose, thrown around them by their utterer; that while there was 
enough to awaken inquiry and kindle hope, there might not be enough 
to enable any one to draw out a chronological chart of the future, or 
announce beforehand the exact dates of any of the great occurrences 
foretold. More than once our Saviour said to the disciples — and in 
so saying did he not teach us the chief use of prophecy ? — " I have 
told you before it come to pass, that when it is come to pass, ye might 
believe." John 14 : 29. And did he not, in the very midst of his 
foretellings of his own second coming, interject the saying: "But of 
that day and hour knoweth no man ; no, not the angels of heaven, 
neither the Son, but my Father only" ? Was the man Christ Jesus, 
iL the days of his humiliation, himself kept in ignorance of that day 
and hour ? It may have been so. As in childhood he grew in wis- 
dom, knowing things this year that he had not known the year before, 
so in manhood revelations of the spiritual world may have been grad- 
ually communicated, and the knowledge of that day and hour kept in 



THE PROPHECIES OF THE MOUNT. 569 

reserve- -kept in the Father's own hand till after his death and resur- 
rection. Or it may have been, that though personally he knew, it 
was a knowledge not to be communicated. Anyhow, that day and 
hour were to have a cloud of obscurity thrown over them which nei- 
ther men nor angels were to be permitted to see through. 

But with all the obscurity thus intentionally thrown around the 
day and the hour, let us not forget that no obscurity whatever, no 
uncertainty whatever, hangs around the great event itself; that the 
same Jesus whom the clouds received out of the apostles' sight, as 
they gazed up after him into heaven, shall come again: the second 
time without sin unto salvation. Putting all intervening comings out 
of sight, we know that he shall come at the end of the world, and we 
know that our death is virtually the end of the world to each of us. 
In all that future which lies before us, these are the only two events 
of which we are absolutely certain : our own approaching death, our 
Lord's approaching advent. Our faith in the certainty of the one 
rests on the uniformity of nature ; our faith in the other on the sure 
testimony of our Lord himself — a testimony that we put above the 
other, for he says, " Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words 
shall not pass away." We must all die, and we must all appear be- 
fore the judgment-seat of Christ. Our eyes must close for ever on 
this present scene ; our eyes must open to the scene of Jesus Christ 
upon this earth as our great Judge. The same double feature belongs 
to both: absolute certainty as to the event, entire uncertainty as to 
the time. We may die to-morrow; we may not die till many years 
hence. Christ may come to-morrow; may not come till many centu- 
ries hence. One might have expected that with all thoughtful men 
who believed themselves to be immortal, who felt themselves to be 
sinful and accountable, this double feature of the two events — events 
charged with such immeasurably important issues — would have stim- 
ulated to constant watchfulness, would have intensified solicitude, 
would have served to keep us humble, keep us earnest, keep us faith- 
ful. But alas for the thoughtless, careless, unbelieving spirit that is 
in us; we make the very things, so fitted and intended to work in us 
these salutary effects, minister to indifference and unconcern. All 
acknowledge that we must die soon. It is the common fate, we say, 
and put the thought of death away. We know not what a day nor 
an hour may bring forth ; we are absolutely uncertain whether our 
next step snail fall here upon the solid earth, or there in the viewless 
eternity We turn the very uncertainty into an argument for delay, 
and postpone preparation till the time for it maybe gone. The truth 
is, that we naturally live here under a terrible tyranny — the tyranny 



570 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

of the present, the sensible, the temporal ; a tyranny but little felt 
by those who give themselves up willingly and wholly to its power. 
But, felt or unfelt, acknowledged or unacknowledged, it is one which 
must be met and be overcome, if we would share the Christian char- 
acter on earth, or rise to the Christian blessedness in heaven. The 
future must carry it over the present ; the unseen over the seen ; the 
eternal over the temporal. Here lies the trial and here lies the tri- 
umph of the faith that is in Jesus Christ; for who is he that over- 
cometh, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Christ? and this is 
the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith — faith in the 
unseen Saviour; faith in his having lived and died for us on earth; 
faith in his having passed into the heavens, appearing there in God's 
presence for us ; faith in his future coming to take us to himself. By 
watchfulness, by prayer, by all good fidelity to our absent Lord, let 
us nourish this vital principle of faith within us ; so that when at last, 
Whether it be through his messenger death, or through the signals of 
his own personal appearance, it is said to us, "Behold, he cometh!" 
the ready answer of our spirit may be, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus!" 






XI. 

The Parable of the Ten Virgins.* 
TUESDAY. 






Two great duties lay on those to whom our Lord's prophecies as 
to his future advents were addressed — watchfulness and diligence. 
These duties he proceeded to illustrate and enforce in two parables 
to which a peculiar interest attaches, as spoken at such a time and 
to such an audience. The first of the two parables was that of the 
Ten Virgins. 

Among the Jews the marriage ceremony was always celebrated 
at nightfall, and the marriage supper was given in the house of the 
bridegroom, and not in that of the bride. The bridegroom, accom- 
panied by a select number of companions, his friends, goes to the 
house of the bride, to conduct her thence to her new home. The 
bride, with a corresponding attendance of companions, awaits his 
arrival, and then, the two bands united, the bridal procession moves 
on to the dwelling where the bridal feast is prepared. The ten vir- 

* Matt. 25 : 1-13. 



THE PARABLE OF THE TEN VIRGINS. 571 

gins spoken of in the parable are friends of the bride, and are wait- 
ing, either at her house, or some suitable place by the way, for the 
announcement of the bridegroom's coming, that they may join the 
marriage procession, go forward with it, and sit down at the pro- 
vided feast. All the ten have lamps. This in every event was neces- 
sary, as it was only by lamplight or torchlight that the procession 
could move on. But these lamps of the ten virgins were not in all 
likelihood their own, nor carried by them only for the light they were 
to yield. As it was customary to provide wedding garments, so was 
it to provide wedding-lamps — such lamps of themselves marking out 
those who bore them as invited guests. Each of the ten virgins of 
the parable has got such an invitation to appear on this occasion as 
an attendant on the bride and has accepted it, and each holds in her 
hand the symbol of her character and office. Very likely the lamps 
were all of one material and pattern. Very likely the ten bearers of 
these were all dressed alike, and that, looking at them as they took 
up together their appointed posts, you might have seen but little if 
any difference in their outward appearance or equipment. Yet there 
was a great, and as it proved, a radical, a vital difference between 
them. Five of them were wise and five were foolish. The wise 
showed their wisdom in this, that they provided beforehand for a 
contingency which, however unlikely, they foresaw might possibly 
occur. The lamp furnished to them had quite enough of oil in it to 
last all the time that it was thought it would be needed. There was 
more than enough oil in it to carry the bearers from the one house to 
the other ; and had all gone as it was first arranged — had the bride- 
groom come at the usual, the set time — the marriage lamp, with the 
ordinary supply of oil that it contained, would have been sufficient. 
But to the five wise virgins the idea had occurred that it was at least 
within the bounds of possibility that a delay in the bridegroom's 
coming might take place. Some unforeseen accident might occur, 
some unthought of hinderance be thrown before him on his way. To 
be prepared for such delay in case it should occur, they took with 
them other separate vessels besides their lamps, (Matt. 25:4,) con- 
taining a supply of oil in reserve, upon which they might draw in the 
event of what was in the lamp itself being all consumed. The foolish 
virgins showed their folly in this, that the} 7 were quite satisfied with 
the provision of oil made for them by their invlters, and never thought 
of supplementing it by any additional provision of their own. Per- 
haps the idea of a delay in the bridegroom's coming never occurred 
to them. It was a tiling that but rarely happened. The idea of 
it would not naturally or spontaneously ai^ise. It would do so only 



572 TITE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

to those who gave themselves purposely and deliberately to think 
over beforehand all that might happen, in order to be provided for 
it. Even if the possibility of some delay had occurred or been sug- 
gested to these foolish virgins, they would have satisfied themselves 
with thinking that it never eould be so long as to burn out all the oil 
which their lamps contained. They were quite sure that all would 
go right ; that the bridegroom would come at the right time ; they 
W3re all too eager about the meeting, and the march, and the spread- 
out banquet to allow their minds to be troubled with calculating all 
the possible evils that might occur, and how they could be most 
effectually guarded against. But they were mistaken in their antici- 
pations. 

"The bridegroom tarried." Taking the parable as a prophetical 
allegory, this is one of the many hints given by our Lord, even to the 
first disciples, that his second coming might possibly be deferred 
longer than they thought. He would not tell them how long; he 
would say nothing that should absolutely and wholly preclude the 
idea of his speedy advent, his coming at any time, to any generation 
of the living ; but yet he would not have them so count upon his 
coming being at hand, as to make no preparation for his absence 
being prolonged, as to commit that species of folly chargeable upon 
the five foolish virgins. 

And " while the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept" 
— the wise and the foolish alike. Perhaps there may be a prophetic 
glance towards that which shall be the condition of the world at the 
time of Christ's second coming — to the general surprise with which 
that event shall burst upon a slumbering, unexpectant earth. What- 
ever secondary allusion of this kind it may carry with it, you will 
notice that this slumbering and sleeping of all is not only what might 
naturally have been expected under the circumstances, but what is 
necessary to lead the story on to the contemplated issue. The delay 
had been longer than any one could have imagined. The bridegroom 
should have been there soon after the darkness had fallen. At mid- 
night, had the set and common time been kept, not only would the 
procession have been all over, but the feast nearly finished. It had 
been with all the virgins a busy day, getting all things ready for so 
great an occasion. Was it wonderful that when, hour after hour, 
there was no signal of the approach, tired nature should claim her 
due, their excited spirits should fail and flag, their eyes get heavy, 
and that they should all slumber and sleep? Had there been no 
such sleeping, had all kept awake throughout, the foolish virgins, by 
the gradual consumption of the oil within their lamps, perhaps by 



THE PARABLE OF THE TEN VIRGINS. 573 

noticing also and reflecting on the provision in the separate vessels that 
their companions had made, would have become aware in season of 
the danger that was at hand, and might have provided against it. On 
the other hand, had it been the foolish only who slept, and while they 
slept had the wise been watching at their side, we could not well 
have excused them if, when the foolish awakened, they had charged 
their companions with great unkindness in having suffered them to 
sleep on, when they must have seen the catastrophe that was impend- 
ing. We are disposed, therefore, to regard this incident as thrown 
in, rather in order to conduct the story to its proper close, than 
as having any distinct and peculiar symbolic signification of its own. 

At midnight the cry came : " Behold, the bridegroom cometh ; go 
ye out to meet him." This cry rouses all the sleepers; all is haste 
and bustle now, as if there were an eagerness to make up for the pre- 
vious delay. As they start up from their sleep, the ten virgins all see 
that their lamps, which they eagerly grasp, are just dying out. With 
the wise it is a quick and easy thing to clear and cleanse the wick, 
and to pour in a fresh supply out of their auxiliary vessels. A minute 
or two so spent, and their lamps are burning as brilliantly as at the 
first. Not so with the foolish virgins. They look despairingly at 
their fading lights. They have no fresh oil to feed their flame. The 
only resource in their extremity is to apply, in all the eagerness and 
impatience of despair, to their companions. "Give us of your oil, 
for our lamps are gone out." But the wise had been as economic as 
they had been foreseeing. They had enough for themselves, but no 
such superabundance that they could safely and prudently supply 
their neighbors. "Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you; 
but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves." It was 
the only alternative left. But, alas! it failed; for while they were 
away beating up the oil-sellers, and trying to make a speedy pur- 
chase, the bridegroom came ; the five that were ready passed on with 
him in the procession, went in with him to the marriage, and the door 
was shut. 

The ten virgins of the parable represent so many of the professed 
disciples of our Lord. Their common equipment, and" their common 
attitude — all of them with marriage lamps in their hands, standing 
waiting the bridegroom's coming — tell us of that prepared and wait- 
ing posture in which all who call themselves by the name of 
Christ are or ought to be found, as those who are looking for the 
coming and glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour, 
Jesus Christ. 

It would, however, be unjust to this parable, and it would involve 



574 THE LIFE OE CHRIST. 

lis speedily in inextricable difficulties of interpretation, if we either 
took the ten virgins as representing the whole collective bcdy of the 
visible church, or took the difference of conduct here displayed, and 
the difference of destiny s to which it led — the final separation of 
the five wise and five foolish — as typical of those two companies 
which are to stand, the one on the right hand and the other on the 
left of their great Judge. Christ's object here is much more limited. 
He is urging throughout this part of his discourse the duty of watch- 
fulness with regard to his approaching advent ; and in this parable 
it is one form or kind of that watchfulness which he desires to incul- 
cate. He does this by showing in an illustrative instance what 
special benefit it may be to him who practises it, and what painful 
consequences the absence of it may entail. The kind of watchfulness 
here so strikingly pressed upon our regard, and emblematically ex- 
hibited in the conduct of five of the ten virgins, is prudence, that 
reflective forethought, which busies itself in providing beforehand for 
emergencies that may possibly arise ; the same virtue, transferred to 
spiritual things, which distinguishes the wise and the prudent of this 
world, who profitably spend many an hour in conjecturing what pos- 
sible contingencies as to their earthly affairs may arise, and in con- 
triving and arranging how each, if it do happen, should be met. 

Among the children of the kingdom, the wise and the prudent are 
they who, having been called to that marriage supper of the Lamb, 
and having received the gracious invitation to sit down with Abraham, 
and Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, prize the invitation 
so highly, and are so anxious that nothing should defraud them of 
the eternal blessedness to which it points, that they give themselves 
with all diligence to the consideration of all the possible risks that 
might come in the way of its finally being made good to them, and to 
the best methods of guarding against them should they occur. They 
look beyond the present, they anticipate evil before it comes, they 
strive to secure themselves against surprise, to stand forearmed to 
meet each enemy. Opposed to them, and answering to the foolish 
virgins of this parable, are those thoughtless disciples, who, satisfied 
with having got the invitation, and with being ranked among the 
number of the invited, foresee no danger, take no precaution, and 
make no provision against it. We do not doubt that, underlying that 
distinction between such wisdom and such folly, which it is the special 
and exclusive design of the parable to show forth, there is another 
broader, deeper, and more radical distinction — even that which sep- 
arates the nominal from the real, the false from the true professor oi 
Christianity. You will soon find, however, (as numberless interpre- 



THE rAKABLE OF THE TEN VIRGINS. 575 

iers have clone,) that if you make that broader and deeper distinction, 
the one here set forth, you will not be able, except by the use of 
great and unseemly violence, to make the story tally with the inter- 
pretation. A lamp is about as good an emblem of visible Christian- 
ity as one could wish, and so it is very natural to regard the ten 
lamp-bearers of the parable as standing as representatives of tho 
entire visible church ; and the oil which feeds the lamp is also an apt 
emblem of that special quickening grace of God's Spirit, (frequently 
in the Bible spoken of as an anointing with oil,) the infusion of which 
into the heart makes the true Christian to differ from the mere nom- 
inal professor. But if that were the difference intended to be sym- 
bolized here by the lamp and the oil, it ought to be a lamp without 
any oil, or a lamp with a different kind of oil in it, which represented 
the mere nominal profession, the show without the substance of true 
piety. But not only are the lamps of all the ten virgins alike, they 
are all filled at first, and filled with the same kind of oil, and burn 
with the same kind of flame. It is not for bringing with them oil- 
less, lightless lamps, it is not for filling them with some spurious kind 
of liquid, sending up only smoke and stench instead of the pure and 
lambent flame, that the foolish virgins suffer so great a loss. It is 
simply and solely for not having a sufficient supply of the oil laid up 
beforehand. If, notwithstanding the difficulty which stands in the 
way of such interpretation arising from the fact that the foolish as 
well as the wise have some oil in their lamps, we still cling to the 
idea — which it is difficult for us to discard, it is so just and so pleas- 
ing — that this oil does represent the grace of the Holy Spirit, would 
not the fair and indeed only conclusion from this parable be, that 
there is a certain equal measure of this grace bestowed at first on all 
alike, such as Romanists believe to be bestowed at baptism, and that 
the difference between the lost and saved, between true and false 
Christians, hinges not on the kind but on the quantity of the grace 
possessed, on the one laying up a separate and sufficient stock before- 
hand, on the other neglecting to do so? But even were we prepared 
for such a view of the parable as would involve such consequences, 
where could the spiritual parallel be found to the separate vessels in 
which the reserve supply is treasured ? 

Instead then of taking the oil as an emblem of the Spirit's regene- 
rating grace, and the lamp as an emblem of the outward form or pro- 
fession of discipleship, and then trying to give a corresponding spirit- 
ual meaning to the different incidents of tho story, and to make the 
difference finally brought out between the wise and the foolish vir- 
gins tally with the difference between all those into whose hearts the 



576 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

heavenly grace has come, and all in whom it is wanting — is it not 
wiser and better here, as in the interpretation of so many of our 
Lord's parables, to confine the parable within its own proper bounds, 
and, looking at its broad and general object, to take it as designed 
to impress upon our hearts the great need of a wise and watchful 
forethought, the great danger to which the want of this forethought 
exposes, the sad and awful issues to which it may conduct? 

Let us return now to the parable, and take up the closing inci- 
dents about the marriage, as to which there can be no uncertainty 
" The bridegroom came ; and they that were ready went in with him 
to the marriage." The future, the everlasting blessedness in store 
for all the true followers of Christ, is spoken of here, as so frequently 
elsewhere, as a royal banquet or feast. "Blessed are they which are 
called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb." Scene of unrivalled 
glory, of exhaustless joy; rich and rare the food provided for the 
guests in the great banqueting-hall of immortality ! Other viands at 
other feasts soon pall on the sated sense ; but for those viands upon 
which the spirits of the blessed shall for evermore be nourished up into 
a growing likeness unto God, the appetite shall ever grow quicker the 
more that is partaken, and the relish be ever the more intense. The 
companionship at other festivals finally wearies ; sooner or later we 
begin to desire that it should close ; but in the hallowed unions and 
fellowships that shall be there, new sources of interest, new springs 
of delight shall be ever opening, each coming to know the other bet- 
ter, and each fresh access of knowledge bringing fresh access of love, 
eind confidence, and joy. Other feasts are broken up, and sad and 
dreary is the hall where hundreds met in buoyant joy, when, the 
guests all gone, the lights grow dim, and darkness and loneliness 
take the place of the bright smile and ringing laugh. But that mar- 
riage supper of the Lamb shall know no breaking up, its tables shall 
never be withdrawn, its companionship shall never end. 

"They that were ready went in: and the door was shut." What a 
surprise, what a disappointment, the five foolish virgins must have 
met with when they came and found that already the bridal party 
had entered, the bridal supper had commenced, and that the door 
was closed against their entrance ! They had been invited to this 
marriage feast, and they had accepted this invitation, as special 
friends of the bride. The idea of their being excluded from the ban- 
quet had never entered into their minds, no, not even after their 
lamps had gone out. True, they had not taken the same precau- 
tion with their wiser companions, but who could have predicted so 
tedious a delay? True, they had not been able to join the pro- 



THE PARABLE OF THE TEN VIRGINS. 577 

cession at the first, but now they have got fresh oil, and their lamps 
are burning as brightly as at first. The door is closed against them— 
surely by inadvertence; it had not been perceived that they still were 
wanting to complete the company. They knock, the door opens 
not; they hear the bridegroom's own voice within, the very voice of 
their invitee With an eagerness in which fear begins to mingle, 
they cry out, "Lord, Lord, open to us." The only answer they get 
is, "Verily, I know you not;" an answer which too plainly tells them 
that within that joyous dwelling they never shall set foot. 

The warning here strikes home upon us all. We too have heard 
the invitation of our Saviour, and outwardly have accepted it. Our 
Chiistianity may be such as shall stand well enough the scrutiny of 
our neighbors, and as may open to us without any right of challenge 
admission to the table of communion. But how many are there 
among such professors of Christianity for whom a surprise as unex- 
pected and as terrible is in reserve as met those foolish virgins ! The 
man who never fears that it may be so with him at the last, who can 
hear about the door of heaven being shut against those who, up to 
the last, expected to get in, and no trembling apprehension come 
upon his spirit that he himself may be among that number, is the 
very man in whose person that terrible catastrophe is most likely to 
be realized. When we know that there is so great a possibility, nay, 
we may say, so great a probability of self-deception; when we believe 
that so many have practised that self-deception on themselves 
throughout life, and never have awakened from its illusions till fchey 
stood before that door of heaven and found it closed against them 
for ever ; how diligent in self-scrutiny should each of us now be ; how 
anxious that he possess not the name only, but the disposition, 
the character, the habits, the conduct of a true follower of Jesus 
Christ ! Let us apply then to ourselves those most impressive words 
of Christ, "Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter 
into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Fathei 
that is in heaven. Many shall say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, 
have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast 
out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then 
will I profess unto them, I never knew you : depart from me, ye that 
work iniquity." 

But that door which Christ himself here tells us will be closed 
at last against so many, is it not now open unto all? Yes. It 
stands before us, invitingly near, most easy of access, with this 
blessed inscription written over it, in characters so large that he 
who runs may read: "Knock, and it shall be opened unto you." 

Life of Christ 37 



THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

How different in this respect from those other doors at w\jich you 
see so many of our race stand knocking — the doors that lead to 
wealth, or fame, or ease and pleasure ! These doors stand so far 
back, away from where the multitude are naturally standing, that 
many, in the rush and throng and pressure never get near them, 
though they toil to do so all their lives. Close in upon and aiound 
each of them what crowds are gathered, knocking so eagerly, so im- 
patiently, often with such impetuous violence ! They open, however, 
to but a few of all this number. For one that finds entrance there 
are hundreds that are kept without. Why is it that the great multi- 
tude will still keep rushing to these doors that remain shut against 
so many, while so few try that other door that remains closed against 
none? Is it that this gate to which our Saviour points us is so 
strait, the way that he would have us walk in, is so narrow ? True, 
the gate is strait — but strait, why, and to whom? Strait, indeed 
impossible to pass through, to all who come to it environed with 
the thick wrapping of pride and worldliness and the spirit of self- 
trust. But strip yourselves of these, come naked and bare of them, 
cjome in all humility, with a broken and contrite heart, and you will 
not find it strait, but most easy of passage. True, the way is 
narrow, narrow for each individual traveller; but who that ever 
tried to tread it would wish it to be broader, to be so wide as to 
suffer him unchecked to wander away from God, or lapse into any 
transgression of that law which is so holy, and just, and good? 
Narrow as it is to each, that way has breadth enough for all to walk 
in it without any of that jostling, and striving, and sore competing 
toil which mark the broader way that so many take. 

Enter ye in at that strait gate. Walk ever humbly, diligently, 
with careful footstep, with watchful wisdom on that narrow way, 
and then let the alarm rise when and how it may ; let the cry strike 
the ear, "Behold, he cometh !" No shut door shall be before you. 
For you, as for your great Forerunner, for you because you follow 
him, the everlasting doors shall be lifted up, and the glad welcome 
given: "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the 
joy of thy Lord." 



THE PAKABLE OF THE TALENTS. 679 

XII. 

The Parable of the Talents.* 

TUESDAY. 

The parable of the talents and the parable of the pounds, afford 
material for very interesting and instructive comparison and con- 
trast. They were delivered at different times, in different circum- 
stances, and they carry with them internal evidences of these diver- 
sities. The parable of the pounds (Luke 19:11-28) was the last 
delivered by our Lord out of Jerusalem, that of the talents the last 
delivered in it. Jesus was on his way up to Jerusalem on the 
occasion of his last visit to the holy city. He had reached and 
passed through Jericho; large numbers had been attracted to him, 
who were full of vague expectations ; and it was because they 
thought that the kingdom of heaven should immediately appear 
that he spake the parable of the pounds. That parable, as originally 
delivered, had a much wider scope and bearing than the parable 
of the talents. It was meant as a warning to the whole nation 
of the Jews, embracing those of that nation who were to receive 
and those who were to reject Jesus as the Messiah. He knew 
well the shock to which his approaching death and disappearance 
would expose all those whose ideas and hopes regarding him had 
been of an entirely secular character. He foresaw the latent enmity 
to him which would break out as soon as he was removed; and he 
knew also the many perils to which his own disciples would be 
exposed by so sudden and unexpected a departure — the evils which 
his continued absence was likely to produce. In the prophetic 
picture which the parable of the pounds holds up, both friends and 
enemies are introduced, and to both appropriate premonitions are 
given. Christ likens himself to a nobleman going into a far country 
to receive a kingdom, and to return. The idea is no doubt borrowed 
froni Archelaus or some other of the Idumean family going to Koine 
to be invested with the royal authority, and returning to Judea to 
be acknowledged as the lawful sovereign. In going away, the noble- 
man calls his ten servants, the whole body of his domestics, and 
gives each of them a pound, saying, "Occupy till I come." But the 
action of the parable is not confined to those servants of the noble- 
man; it takes in all those citizens besides, who so soon as his back 
is turned, whatever may have been their dispositions and conduct 

Matt. 25 : 14-30. 



580 THE LIFE OE CHRIST. 

towards him when he was there in person among them, break out 
into open and undisguised hostility, and go the length even of send- 
ing a messenger after him, saying, "We will not have this man 
to reign over us." Again, on the return of the nobleman, having 
received the kingdom, after reckoning with his servants, and seeing 
and rewarding the diligence of those who had made a good improve- 
ment of the money committed to their care, the king calls for those 
his enemies who would not that he should reign over them, and has 
them slain in his presence. In the conduct of the citizens, and in 
the punishment of these who cast off his rule, the parable of the 
pounds embraces a class not covered by that of the talents, which 
has throughout to do alone with the master and his servants. This 
latter parable was delivered, not to a mixed audience, but to one 
singularly select. It was not merely that none but disciples were 
present, none of those for whom that branch of the story about 
rebellious citizens and their punishment was intended — there were 
none but apostles present. Now, corresponding to this, let us 
notice, that Christ stands represented here by a master who, on 
Leaving, calls, it is said, his own servants, those who were his ser- 
vants in some closer or more peculiar sense than was the case with 
ordinary domestics; and of those there are but three — both name 
and number indicating that it is Christ's connection with those who, 
like the apostles, were admitted to closer relationship, and had 
bestowed on them peculiar privileges, which is here more particu- 
larly illustrated. And this view of the more limited embrace of the 
parable of the talents is confirmed when we compare what the ten 
servants, (the wider household of the nobleman,) and the three 
servants, (the personal attendants of their master,) have committed 
to them, on the occasion of his departure. The ten, the more 
numerous body — representative therefore, as we conceive, of the 
general body of disciples — get all alike: each a single pound, a 
pound being but the twentieth part of a talent. It is the common 
possession, the common property, the common privileges of all dis- 
ciples, what each and all of them have had bestowed on them by 
their great Master in the heavens, which is here set forth. On the 
other hand, the one, the two, the five talents given to each of the 
three servants, represent the larger but more special donations 
conferred, not on all alike, but in singular variety and in unequal 
proportions. That such peculiar bestowments of the divine grace 
are here pointed at may still further appear from what is said about 
each of the three getting one, or two, or five talents — each man 
according to his ability — his natural capabilities, whatever they mav 



THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS. 581 

l>e, not forming part of the talent or talents committed to his trust, 
but rather forming the ground and measure upon which, and in 
proportion to which, these are bestowed. As this master has three 
servants to whom, according to their original ability, he intrusts a 
larger portion of his goods than he would commit to ordinary ser- 
vants, so the great Master of the spiritual household has those to 
whom, in the wider spheres of opportunity and of influence opened 
up to them, in the richer spiritual gifts and graces bestowed, qualify- 
ing them to fill those spheres, he assigns a higher function, as he 
looks for a corresponding and commensurate return. 

Such seem to be legitimate enough conclusions from the different 
audiences to which the two parables were addressed, the different 
ends they were designed to gain, the different structure of their 
opening sections. Of far greater importance, however, than the 
tracing of any such nice distinctions — in which it is quite possible 
that we may go too far, is it to fix our thoughts upon that common, 
general, universal lesson embodied in both these parables. All of 
us who have made the Christian profession acknowledge ourselves 
as servants of an absent Lord. He has temporarily withdrawn from 
us his visible presence, but he has not left us with the bonds of 
our servitude lightened or relaxed. So far from this, do not these 
parables very clearly and significantly point to something peculiar 
in the interval between his withdrawal and return, marking it off 
as one of special probation? Let us remember that it is from the 
relationship which of old existed between a master and his slaves 
that the imagery of these parables is taken. A slave in those days 
might not only be called to do the ordinary work, household or out- 
of-doors, which fell to the lot of an ordinary domestic : but if he had 
the talent for it, or were trustworthy, his master might allow him 
to engage in trade, or to practise in any profession, the master 
receiving the profits, the slave reaping the benefit of better position 
and better maintenance. Were such a master, on going away for 
a considerable period from his home and country, to give three of 
his slaves who were thus employed, full and unchecked liberty in 
his absence to follow the bent of their own taste and talent, instead 
of prescribing for each of them a certain kind and amount of work 
which, under the eye of his overseer, day by day, and week by 
week, they were to perform, we would speak of this as liberal treat- 
ment, as a mark on his part of trust and confidence. But if, still 
further, such a master on the eve of his departure, were to summon 
his slaves into his presence, and supply them with a larger or a 
smaller capita" to operate on, which capital they were left at perfect 



582 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

freedom to employ each as he pleased, provided only that he era- 
ployed it always as his master's capital, and kept the returns as his 
master's profits, whether such a procedure on the master's part be 
assigned to a selfish or to a generous motive, most certainly would 
place the servant in a new and peculiarly responsible position — 
put him upon a special probation. Such is the position which all 
true servants of the Saviour occupy; and such the probation to 
which they are now exposed. Our Master is not here personally 
to assign to us our different places and our different work; he is not 
here directly to inspect, and day by day, at each day's close, to 
call us into his presence and make the reckoning with us. He has 
retired from the platform of this visible creation; but not the less, 
rather indeed the more, are we under obligation to work for and 
to work under him; for has he not treated us with a generous 
liberality? has he not left us so to deal with that portion of his 
goods he has put into our hands as to each of us seemeth wisest 
and best? has he not left us to cultivate each the special talent he 
has bestowed? and broad and varied as the field of human effort, 
so broad and varied has he not made that field, in cultivating which 
we may still be serving him ? has he not even warned us — however 
different our ways of life — against judging one another, saying to 
us, "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own 
master he standeth or falleth"? And has he not generously dealt 
out to us of his goods, leaving none of us, no, not the youngest, the 
weakest, the poorest, the least gifted, bankrupt of the means to 
serve him, without the single pound? The one, the two, the five 
talents, have they not been lavishly conferred? And we have 
accepted all as put into our hands by him, as still his ; as ours only 
to be used for him as he desires. That, and no less, lies involved in 
our very profession as Christians. 

" The Lord Jesus Christ, whose I am and whom I serve," one ol 
the best and briefest descriptions of discipleship ; yet how much does 
it include ! All the greatest religious ideas and beliefs are simple ; 
the difficulty lying not in the intellectual conception, but in the prac- 
tical realization of them. Is it not so with the idea that we are ser- 
vants — stewards, having nothing that we can absolutely call our own ; 
nothing that we are left at liberty to dispose of irrespective of the 
will of the Sovereign Proprietor in the heavens. Easy enough m 
thought to embrace this idea; easy enough in words to embody it; 
not difficult to get an acknowledgment of it from every one who has 
any faith in God or Christ ; it is so natural, so necessary a conclusion 
from the position in which we and our Creator, we and our Redeemer, 



THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS. 583 

stand to one another. But truly, habitually, practically to carry the 
idea out ; to regard our time, our wealth, our faculties, our influence, 
as all given us to be spent and exercised under the abiding, control- 
ling conviction that they are ours but in loan, held by us but in trust, 
another's property assigned to us to be administered agreeably to his 
will and for his good and glory; let us all be ready at once to say 
hew difficult we have felt it to frame our doings upon this principle ; 
to live and act as the servants of that Master to whom, ere very long, 
we shall have to give in the strict account as to how every portion of 
that capital which he advanced was employed. The sense of account- 
ability is universally felt — is so wrought into the tissue of our moral 
nature that you cannot extract it thence without the destruction of 
our moral being. Yet, alas ! more or less with all of us, is it not as 
the voice of one crying in vain in the market-place, a voice pleading 
for the divine ownership over us, to which we render, when we pause 
to listen to it, the homage of respectful consent, but which is* drowned 
and lost amid the other nearer, louder, more vehement voices which 
salute our ear. 

But let us turn now to the reckoning and the reward. In the par- 
able of the pounds — on the nobleman's return, he calls for those ser- 
vants to whom he had given the money, to see how much each had 
gained by trading. The first servant approaches, and says, " Lord, 
thy pound hath gained ten pounds. And he said, Well done, thou 
good servant; thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou 
authority over ten cities." A second servant says, " Lord, thy pound 
hath gained five pounds." He repeats the same words to him : " Well 
done, thou good servant; thou hast been faithful in a very little, have 
thou authority over five cities." In the parable of the talents, the 
first servant comes and says, "Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five 
talents; behold, I have gained beside them five talents more. His 
lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant; thon 
hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many 
things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord." The second comes and 
says, "Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have 
gained two other talents beside them. His lord said unto him, Well 
done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few 
things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the 
joy of thy lord." 

We have but to put the two narratives together to bring out the 
distinction which is made in the reward conferred upon the two ser- 
vants in the parable of the pounds, and the absence of any such dis- 
tinction in the case of the two servants in the parable of the talents, 



584 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

He who of one pound had made ten, gets the lordship over ten cities; 
he who of one pound had made five, gets the lordship over five — an 
exact proportion kept between the service rendered, the increase 
effected, and the reward bestowed. But he who doubled his two 
talents, though putting a less amount of gain into his master's hand, 
yet in the way of improvement of his powers and opportunities had 
done as much as he who doubled his five. You find no difference, 
accordingly, made between them; the praise and the award are fch<? 
same with both. One can scarcely believe that the variation here is 
accidental and insignificant, it carries with it so striking a verification 
of the divine declaration, " Every man shall receive his own reward 
according to his own labor." 

But while the primary and direct reward is thus meted out in such 
exact proportion to the zeal, fidelity, and success with which the ori- 
ginal gift is employed, yet when the lost pound and the lost talent 
came to be disposed of, they were each at once handed over to the 
one who had most already, without respect to the previous service 
or increase. Had these been taken into account, he who out of two 
talents had gained other two would have had as good a claim to the 
forfeited talent as he who out of five talents had gained other five, 
while he who of one pound had made five, would have been entitled 
to a proportionate share of the disposable pound. AH such claims, 
however, are overlooked. It is to him that hath the most that it is 
given, that he may have the more abundantly. In the curiously 
modified structure of these two parables, by that wherein they agree 
and that wherein they differ — how stiikingly is the double lesson 
taught, that while each man's proper and direct reward shall exactly 
tally with his proper and individual work, yet that in the distribution 
of extra or additional favors regard shall be had to existing position, 
existing possessions, existing capability; that the awards of heaven 
shall be adjusted in duplicate proportion to the service previously 
rendered, and to the capacity presently possessed. 

Let us not pass Without remark the free and unconstrained, the 
warm and generous commendation which is expressed in the " Well 
done, good and faithful servant." Doubtless there had been deficien- 
cies; these servants had not always been as diligent as they might 
have been; many an opportunity had they let slip unimproved ; many 
a time had they been idle when they should have been active, sloth- 
ful when they should have been watchful; and even in their most 
diligent endeavors to turn to best account their master's means, an 
eye that tpyj curiously scanned all their motives might easily have 
detected imperfections and flaws. But their generous Lord and Mas- 



THE PAEABLE OF THE TALENTS. 585 

ter does not in the day of reckoning go back thus upon the past to 
drag out of it all that could be brought up against them. He takes 
the gross result, and sees in it the proof and evidence of a prevailing 
fidelity. Ungrudgingly, and without any drawback, he pronounces 
his sentence of commendation, and bestows his rich rewards. No 
earthly lord or master, in fable or in fact, on any day of reckonbg, 
ever dealt so generously with those who had tried to serve him, as 
our heavenly Lord and Master will deal with us, if honestly, sin- 
cerely, devotedly, though with all our manifold imperfections, we give 
ourselves to the doing of his good and holy will. 

These good and faithful servants thus commended and thus 
rewarded, are they not held out as examples and encouragements ? 
Is it wrong then to work the work of him that hath sent us into this 
world, or to be animated to increased diligence in that work, in order 
that we too may receive a similar commendation and share a like 
reward ? Does any caution and reserve in the employment of such 
an argument — the holding out of such an inducement — mark the 
writings of the New Testament? Do the inspired teachers, when 
they hold up the rewards of immortality before our eyes, surround 
the exhibition with warnings against the imagination that any work 
of man can have any worth or be at all rewardable in the sight of 
God? Do they think it necessary to check and to guard every 
appeal of this kind which is made by them ? Listen to the manner 
in which St. Paul speaks on this subject: "Let no man beguile you 
of your reward. Be not deceived, God is not mocked. He that 
soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, and he that 
soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. Let us 
not be weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we 
faint not. Be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the 
work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor shall not bt, 
in vain in the Lord." Hear the manner in which St. Peter speaks to 
those who had obtained like precious faith with himself : " Where- 
fore, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue 
knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance pa- 
tience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kind- 
ness; and to brotherly kindness charity For if ye do these 

things, ye shall never fall : for so an entrance shall be ministered unto 
you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Sav- 
iour Jesus Christ." "Look to yourselves, that we lose not those 
things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward." 
Above all, listen to the frequency, the particularity, the earnestness 
with which our Lord and Saviour himself urges this consideration 



586 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

upon Lis disciples. Would Le comfort tLem under tLe world's re- 
proacL ? " Blessed are ye," Le says, " wLen men sLall revile you, and 
persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my 
sake; rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in 
Leaven." Would Le warn tLem against ostentation in religion— 
against being led away by tLe example of tLose wLo, by making long 
prayers, prayers in tLe synagogues and corners of tLe streets, enjoyed 
a large popular reputation for piety ? " But tLou, wLen tliou pray- 
est," Le says, " enter into tLy closet, and wLen tLou Last shut thy 
door pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which 
seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." Would he stir them up 
to works of love, to deeds of compassion? "He that receiveth a 
prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward, 
and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous 
man shall receive a righteous man's reward; and whosoever shall 
give a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say 
unto you he shall in no wise lose his reward." Nor has the Saviour's 
language changed, when after his ascension he shows himself to the 
beloved disciple. Among the latest of all Christ's reported words 
are these : " Behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to 
give to every man according as his work shall be. Blessed are they 
that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of 
life, and may enter in through the gates into the city." Is heaven, 
then, to be represented as a place our right to enter which is to be 
won by our good works ? No ; to set forth heaven as a reward to be 
secured by human effort, by human worth, is a very different thing 
from setting forth a reward in heaven as that which is to crown every 
act of love and service which the Christian renders. Scripture never 
does the former. The sinner's acceptance with God, his title to eter- 
nal life, it attributes solely and exclusively to the merits of the Re- 
deemer. From the office of justifying us in God's sight, our own 
works, of whatever kind they be, are absolutely and utterly excluded. 
But this does not imply that all the works of one who has not been 
justified, are utterly valueless and vile. The strict morality of that 
young man whom Jesus looked on, and whom Jesus loved, was not 
thus valueless, was not thus vile in the Redeemer's sight, and neither 
should it be in ours. Still less does it imply that the works of one 
who has been justified can have no such worth or merit as to be in 
any way rewardable. In the strictest sense of the term, no creature, 
however high and holy, can merit anything at the hands of its Crea- 
tor—that is, claim anything from God properly as his due ; for what 
has he that he has not received ? and whatever he do, he does but 



THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS. 58? 

what God has a right to claim from him, and which consequently can 
give him no right to claim anything of God. But in that secondary 
sense in w r hich alone we speak of worth, merit, rewardability, as 
attaching to human character, to human actions, you find in Holy 
Writ that the true Christian's works of faith and labors of love are 
spoken of as sacrifices acceptable, well pleasing to God, drawing 
after them here and hereafter a great reward. 

There is no danger of urging to Christian work by a respect to 
the recompense of that reward in heaven which it shall bring here- 
after in its train, if only we have a right conception of what kind of 
work it is that is there rewarded, and what kind of reward it is that 
it entails. 

Had the servants in either of those parables which we have now 
before us been trading with the pounds or with the talents, in the 
belief that these were their own, or with the view of keeping the 
whole profits that they realized to themselves, the " Well done, good 
and faithful servant" would never have been pronounced on them, 
and into their hands no reward of any kind would in the day of 
reckoning have been put. 

"Lord, thy pound hath gained ten pounds;" the one pound was 
his lord's at the beginning, and the ten pounds are his lord's at the 
end. It is this fidelity and zeal in the management of another's 
property for another's behoof which is rewarded by the lordship over 
the ten cities. And even so is it of all spiritual service rendered unto 
Christ. Whatever is its outward form, however like to that which 
Christ requires, yet if it spring from a selfish or mercenary motive, if 
it be done w T ith no other aim than to secure a personal advantage, it 
comes not within the range of that economy of reward w 7 hich Christ 
has instituted in his kingdom. 

Again, the rewards which the good and faithful servants are 
represented here as receiving, consist in their elevation to rule and 
authority — a rule and authority not absolute or independent, not 
to be exercised for their own individual glory or their own indi- 
vidual good — a rule and authority to be held by them but as under- 
governors, in subjection still to their Lord and Master, and to be 
exercised by them for the good of his great empire. The reward con- 
sists but in a higher species of the same kind of service which they 
had rendered. The wages they have earned are made up of b 
larger quantity and a higher kind of work. You may bribe a mail 
to diligent and continued labor in a work to which he has no heart., 
and under a master whom he cares little or nothing for, by holding 
out a tempting wage; but then the wage must be different from the 



588 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

work, a wage of a kind which the man covets, for a work to which 
he is indifferent, or which is distasteful. But who would enter the 
service of any master, if the only wage that was offered was so much 
more work to do ? who but he who loved the work for the work's 
sake and the master's sake, and to whom, in consequence of that 
love to him and it, no more tempting offer could be held out than 
a largei- sphere of labor and a larger power to fill it? Such, and 
no other, are the terms of the Christian service. Such, and no other, 
the wages that our Heavenly Master holds out to all the laborers in 
his earthly vineyard. Do you love that Master with all your heart ? 
Is it the highest aim of your being to serve him ? Is it the deepest 
joy of your heart when you are able to do him any service ? Then, 
toiling laborer, look onward, upward to your heavenly reward. Now 
you often have but little liking to the spiritual service. Then your lik- 
ing for it shall be so strong, you will never be able to keep your hand 
for a moment from the doing of it. Lazily, impurely, imperfectly 
is the work executed now ; ardently, unremittingly, perfectly shall it 
be done then, and in such doing you shall enter into the joy of your 
Lord. 



XIII. 

The Day op Judgment.* 

TUESDAY. 

"God hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in 
righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath 
given assurance unto all men in that he hath raised him from the 
dead." "The Father hath committed all judgment unto the Son." 
"We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ." We 
might have imagined that all the ends of a judgment to come might 
have been gained by its taking effect on each separate spirit on 
its passage after death into the presence of the great Judge, its 
consignment thereafter to its appropriate condition. Besides this, 
however, we are taught that there is to be a time, a day specially 
set apart — at the resurrection from the dead, for the public, simul- 
taneous judgment of our whole race. Having warned his disciples 
of its approach, Jesus proceeds to describe some of this great day's 
incidents. 

His final advent for judgment is to take the world by surprise. 

• Matt. 25:31-34. 



THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 589 

It is to come as in the night the thief cometh, as in the day the 
flash of lightning bursts from the bosom of the thunder-cloud. The 
day before its last shall see nothing unusual in the earth. Over 
one -half the globe the stir and bustle of life shall be going on as 
in the days before the flood. They shall be eating and drinking, 
buying and selling, marrying and giving in marriage; the market- 
places full of eager calculators, the fields of toiling laborers, the 
homes of thoughtless, happy groups. - In the quiet churchyard the 
group of mourners shall be gathered around the last opened grave, 
the coffin shall have reached its resting-place, and the hand of the 
gravedigger be raised to pour the kindred earth upon the dead. 

Over the other half of the globe the inhabitants shall have gone 
to rest ; the merchant dreaming of to-morrow's gains, the senator of 
his next day's oration. Awake in his solitary chamber the student 
shall be writing at his desk; and in the banquet-room the lights 
shall be glittering, and the inviting table spread, and dance and 
song and ringing laughter shall be there. Just then, without herald 
sent or note of warning given, the Lord himself shall descend from 
heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump 
of God. That shout, the trumpet-call of heaven — that only sound 
that ever spanned at once the globe, and was heard the same 
moment at either pole — how at its fearful summons shall the sleepers 
start up, their dreamings all cut short ! The pen shall drop from 
the writer's hand; and a shivering terror, like that which filled 
Belshazzar's hall, shall run through the banquet-room, and the jest 
half uttered, the song half sung, they shall stare at one another 
in pale affright! In the thronging market-place the buyer shall 
forget the price he offered, the seller the price he asked: in the 
toiling harvest-field, the stooping reaper shall look up, and as he 
looks, the last cut grain of earth shall drop out of his hand; and in 
the quiet churchyard the work of burial shall be stopped, and the 
mourners shall see a strange commotion in the grave ; for it shall do 
more, that trumpet-blast of judgment, than waken all the sleeping, 
arrest all the waking inhabitants of the globe. It shall go where 
sound never went; it shall do what sound never did; it shall pene- 
trate the stony monument; it shall pierce the grassy mound. Far 
down through many a fathom of the heaving waters shall it descend ; 
over the deep bed of ocean shall it roll. And at its summons the 
sea shall give up the dead that are in it; and death and Hades the 
dead that are in them. liaised from their graves, the dead, both 
small and great, shall stand before the Lord. They shall "be caught 
up to meet the Lord in the air;" lifted up above that earth upon 



590 THE LIFE OE CHRIST. 

which the renovating fire shall already be preparing to do its work, 
What a strange assemblage ! The babe that had been born but an 
hour before ; the ancient man who, in the times before the flood, had 
lived for nigh a thousand years; the first buried, the last buried, the 
half -buried —all the vast congregation of the dead mingling with the 
hosts of the living. And this great company, as it rises to meet the 
Lord in the air, is to approach another, it may be as large, descend- 
ing from the heavens. For when the Son of man shall come in his 
glory to judge the earth, "all his holy angels" are to come with him. 
Heaven for the time is as it were to empty itself of its inhabitants ; 
their shining ranks are to line the skies, their bright forms bending 
in eagerness over the impending scene. And yet another company, 
of other aspect, is to be there — those angels " which kept not their 
first estate, but left their own habitation, reserved in everlasting 
chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day:" hell 
from beneath moved to meet the Lord at his coming; its demon 
hosts drawn up unwillingly into close proximity with those who 
once in the ages long gone by had been their associates in the 
heavenly places. Hell and heaven brought thus for once together, 
with earth coming in between, that from its intervening companies 
each may draw to itself all it can claim as properly its own, and 
then, with a contrast heightened by the temporary contact and the 
fresh accessions gained, to part for ever. 

Soon as all the nations are gathered before him, the Judge shall 
send forth his angels, and by their agency shall separate them one 
from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats; and 
"he shall set the sheep on his right hand, and the goats on his 
left." This separation shall take place in silence. Child shall meet 
that day with parent, and friend with long-lost friend; and parent 
shall part from child, and friend from friend — no welcomes given, no 
questions asked, no farewells taken. On him who fills that throne, 
set there for judgment, shall every eye be fixed, and in stillness deep 
as death shall each ear wait to drink in the sentence from his lips 
Then, as in this mute and awful expectation all are standing, " shall 
the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my 
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation 
of the world.' 1 Every clause, almost every word here, is rich in 
meaning. 

"Then shall the King say" — it is a king, it is ike King, the King 
of kings, the Lord of lords, who speaks. Visibly now before tho 
assembled universe shall Jesus of Nazareth be enthroned. He who 
when here with us on earth, veiled his glory, took no higher titlo 



THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 591 

than the Son of man, was content to stand before an earthly judg- 
ment-seat and be doomed to die — shall come now with power and 
great glory He shall come, as we are told in one place, in his own 
glory ; as we are told in another, in the glory of the Father. With 
all the essential glory of his native divinity, even that glory which 
he had with the Father before the world was— with all the addi- 
tional accumulated glory accruing to him in virtue of his having 
triumphed over death and hell for us men and for our salvation, 
shall he be then visibly invested. He shall "sit upon the throne of 
his glory." What this throne is as to its outward form and splendor, 
it may be idle to imagine. It is described in one scripture as a 
great white throne. Daniel, speaking of the appearance of the Son 
of man, says that "his throne was like the fiery flame." He is to 
come, we are distinctly told, in the clouds of heaven. It was in 
a cloud that Jesus was borne up out of the apostles' sight as they 
gazed up towards heaven as he went up, and the two men in white 
apparel, who stood by them, said, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye 
gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from 
you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him 
go into heaven." Acts 1 : 11. It may be on a cloud-woven throne that 
Jesus shall then appear. If so, the clouds that form it shall have t\ 
hvilliance brighter far than that of any which have ever floated in 
our skies; their splendor caught not from the shining on them of 
a far- distant sun, but coming from an inner glory too bright for 
human gaze, of which their richest lustre is but a dim shadow — that 
shadow serving as a veil to shade and drape it, so as human eye 
may look upon it. But whatever its substance, whatever its form, 
it shall be in sight of all, a throne — the throne of judgment, to 
whose occupant the great and solemn work, one for which omnis- 
cience is needed, which the Omniscience alone could properly dis- 
charge, has been committed. Doubts have been entertained by 
some of the true and proper divinity of Jesus Christ. When he 
comes, and is seen seated upon that throne with that royal retinue 
of angels around him, and undertakes and executes that mighty 
office of the Judge of all the earth, shall any doubts of his divinity 
be cherished then? How suitable a thing in the arrangements of 
the divine government does it appear, that he who submitted to all 
the scorn and the contumely, the suffering and the death, for out 
redemption, should thus, at the winding up of the world's affairs, 
have assigned to him this office of trust and honor; that to him 
every knee should be made then to bow\ and every tongue confer 
that he is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. 



592 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

" Tlie king shall say to those on his right hand." To them he first 
shall turn, on them he shall first fix his eye ; and when he takes the 
survey of that countless host stretching far and wide away, till it 
mingles with the crowd of angels gathering in arid pressing near to 
those whom they wait to hail as members of the holy, happy family 
of the blessed, shall the spirit of the Redeemer not rejoice? In 
sight of the multitude that no man can number, from every kindred, 
and tribe, and people, and nation, all ransomed from sin and death 
through him, shall he not see of the travail of his soul and be satis- 
fied? It may be — none can tell — over the very scenes of his earthly 
sorrows that he shall then hover. The approach to this world must 
be made along some definite line, towards some definite locality. And 
what more natural, what more likely than that the throne should rest 
above the eminence on which the cross once stood ? And if, as he 
once more nears the places — now seen for the last time, ere they pass 
away amid dissolving fires — the sorrows of the great agony and death 
that he there endured should rise up to his thoughts, would not the 
sight of that goodly company of the redeemed on his right hand 
make the very memory of them to minister an abounding joy? He 
shall not be insensible to the triumph of his humiliation unto death 
which that day shall disclose. It shall be with no unmoved or unre- 
joicing spirit that he shall say, " Come, ye blessed of my Father, 
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the 
world." 

He shall say "Come" with what different feeling, with what a dif- 
ferent effect, fioin what once attended the utterance of the same 
word ! He had said once to all the sinful children of men, " Come 
unto me, and I will give you rest." But he had to accompany and 
to follow up the gracious invitation with the sad and sorrowful excla- 
mation, " Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life." But no 
danger now of this invitation being rejected, no sorrow to shade the 
spirit of him who gives it. With all the exultation of one who asks 
those to come who he knows will be all ready rejoicingly to follow, 
does he utter the gracious word. "Come," he says; and each foot- 
step is ready to advance, and each mansion in heaven "echoes back 
the invitation, as if impatient to receive its guest." 

" Come, ye blessed of my Father." His redeemed are not to be 
recognized as those who have been plucked by him out of the hand 
of an angry God, whom it has taken the very utmost, of service and 
sacrifice on his part to appease and propitiate. They are the blessed 
of the Father equally as they are the ransomed of the *3on. It is with 
ihe Father's full approval that they are invited to the realms of bliss. 



THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 593 

Hie pity, love, and mercy provided the lamb for the sacrifice; and 
now that the first intentions of the redemption have been fulfilled in 
them by their entering into peace with him, and their drinking in of 
the spirit of his dear Son, his infinite benignity but waits to bless 
thf m in the full enjoyment of himself throughout all eternity. '*, Ye 
blessed of my Father." Here he pronounces the blessing who has 
p wer to make it good. We ask God's blessing on those we love, 
V. ut, alas ! we have not that blessing at command. It is often but the 
vague wish of a kindly nature for others' happiness which takes that 
forro. It is at best but the expression of a desire, the offering of a 
petition, which it remains with another to grant or to refuse. But to 
be called the blessed of the Father by Christ the Son, this is to be 
made the very thing they are pronounced to be ; and blessed for ever 
shall they be of him who made heaven and earth, whose large capa- 
city to bless shall open all its stores, and lavish upon them all ite 
bounties. 

"Inherit the kingdom." It is a kingdom, nothing less thai a 
kingdom, that is to be entered on, possessed, enjoyed; To rise to be 
a king is the highest object of earthly ambition. To ascend a throne 
is to reach the highest summit of earthly elevation. A crown is the 
richest ornament the human brow can wear. And what is the bur- 
den of the song of praise of the redeemed ? " Unto him that loved 
us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us 
kings and priests to God and his Father, to him be glory and domin- 
ion for ever and ever." And what saith the Lord himself to all hi* 
faithful followers ? " To him that overcometh will I give to sit with 
me on my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my 
Father on his throne." " Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give 
thee a crown of life." Whether in the condition of the redeemed here- 
after there shall be anything of an outward kind, of position and pre- 
rogative, of authority and rule, corresponding to those of the kingly 
estate, we need not now inquire. A few dim and scattered hints upon 
this subject do meet our eye in the sacred Scriptures, upon which, if 
it were cautiously attempted, some plausible enough conjectures might 
be grounded. There is one kingdom, however, that we know of, into 
full possession of which those on the right hand of the Judge shall 
enter, the glory and the blessedness of which need no outward accom- 
paniment to enhance them — the kingdom of which Jesus spake when 
he said, "The kingdom of God is within you;" that kingdom which 
is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. Within the 
heart of every true Christian this kingdom is even now set up and 
established. But here, even in its best estate, the empire of God 

Ufc of ClirUt 38 



V 

594 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

and Christ, of truth, of love, of holiness, is a sadly distracted and 
divided one. It is sustained by constant conflict ; harassing always 
the inward strife, and varied the fortunes of this changeful war. But 
rejoice, all ye who have enlisted in this noblest of all conflicts, who, 
following Christ, with him as your great leader and exemplar evei 
before you, day by day are carrying on this inward warfare. The 
rule of your spirit, the empire of your heart, you have given to the 
Lord that bought you, and his finally, undividedly, for ever it shall 
be. The struggle is not to last for ever. The enemies, so many, so 
powerful, within and without, by whom you are so often overcome, 
are not for ever to haunt and harass and assault. At death they 
shall be driven from the field ; after death they shall cease to have all 
power, and then, when on that great day you stand on the right hand 
of the Judge, then shall the full, the perfect, the undivided reign of 
holiness commence, and in every thought and affection and desire of 
your heart doing willing homage to the Redeemer, in every faculty 
of your being going forth in the utmost intensity of its exercise rejoi- 
cingly to do his will, the kingdom shall be yours, Christ shall reign 
in you, and you shall reign through him. 

But this kingdom is to come to you by inheritance. It is not one 
that you are to win by your own efforts, that you are to acquire as if 
by right in virtue of any sacrifices made, any labors undergone, any 
victories achieved. It is to become yours by heirship, by the will of 
another, bestowed upon you as his children. You must first become 
children of God by faith that is in Jesus Christ, and, being children, 
then shall ye be heirs, heirs of God, joint-heirs with Jesus Christ. 
The title to the heavenly inheritance links itself at once and insepara- 
bly with our vital union to Christ our living Head. Let Christ be 
ours by a humble trust, a loving embrace, a dutiful submission, then 
heaven is ours by consequence as natural and necessary as the son is 
heir to the possessions of his parent. Look ever, then, on that rich 
inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, that fadeth not away, as the 
blood-bought purchase of the cross, the full completed title to which 
is one of the things freely given you of God in Christ, to be instantly 
and gratefully received in the very moment of your first believing. 
Let your hope of heaven base itself thus from the first firmly upon 
Christ, and it shall grow up into strength, and be indeed the anchor 
of your soul, sure and steadfast, entering into that within the veil. 

The kingdom " prepared for you from the foundation of the world.' ; 
The preparation oT this kingdom for us, of us for this kingdom, is no 
secondary, no subsidiary device, no afterthought of God. The re- 
demption that is through Jesus Christ our Lord is not to be thought 



THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 595 

of bj us as a scheme or plan fallen upon simply to meet and mitigate 
the evils of the Fall. The primary, the parent, the eternal purpose 
of the Supreme in the creation and government of the world, was to 
make and fashion here the materials out of which a kingdom was to 
be erected, to stand throughout eternity a glorious monument of his 
wisdom, mercy, righteousness, and love. For this the foundations of 
the world were laid, for this was sin suffered to enter, for this did the 
Son of the Eternal become incarnate; for this he lived, he suffered, 
he died, he rose again ; for this are we all being passed through the 
sifting, testing, humbling, purifying, and sanctifying processes which 
make up the spiritual web and tissue of our earthly life. How weighty 
the argument to give ourselves heart and soul, all we are and all we 
have, to Christ, that in us and by us, the earliest, the dearest, the 
dominant design of our heavenly Father may be fulfilled. Shall we, 
by our indifference, our worldliness, our selfishness, our ungodliness, 
be parties to the defeating of this so ancient, so infinitely benignant 
purpose of the Most High ? Should any of us doubt that if in sim- 
plicity of purpose we turn to Christ, and give ourselves to him, aught 
like repulse or failure shall await us ? Will God refuse to do that in 
us and for us, the doing whereof to and for sinners such as we are 
has been one of the very things that from eternity has lain the near- 
est to his heart ? 

We know but little of what awaits us after death. It would ap- 
pear, however, from all that the Scriptures say, that the first time that 
ever with bodily eye we shall look upon our Lord and Saviour, shall 
be on that day when he shall come sitting on the throne of his glory, 
when before him we and all the nations of the earth shall be gath- 
ered. If so, the first words that we shall ever hear issuing audibly 
from his sacred lips shall be these — may heaven in mercy grant it 
shall be as spoken of us, and to us, that they shall fall upon our ear — 
" Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for 
you from the foundation of the world." 



.096 THE LIFE OE CHRIST. 

XIV. 

The Day of Judgment.* 

TUESDAY. 

Is Christ's description of his last coming to judge the world, aa 
given in the twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew's gospel, a parable 
like the three that precede it ? While substantially true, that is, true 
as to the great fact that it announces and the great lesson it conveys., 
is it nevertheless to be taken as a story of the imagination, whose 
fancied incidents are but the drapery with which the hand of the great 
Artist clothes the fact and illustrates the lessons ? We cannot believe 
so. The transition at the thirty-first verse from the style of the par- 
able to that of plain and simple narrative is too marked to be over- 
looked or set aside. The Son of man, who takes the place of the 
nobleman and the bridegroom, is a real not a figurative character, 
and all that is said in the thirty-first, thirty-second, thirty- third, and 
thirty-fourth verses bears the marks of a faithful recital of what is 
actually to happen when the last day of the world's history arrives. 
But after the separation between the righteous and the wicked has 
been effected, is the Judge to enter upon such a formal statement of 
the grounds upon which the sentence in either case is based ? and is 
there actually to be such a colloquy between him and those on his 
right hand and those on his left as is here recorded ? We can scarcely 
believe this. It is difficult even to conceive how or by whom so great 
a multitude on either side could conduct such a colloquy with the 
Judge as is here recited. Nor is it necessary to believe that such 
verbal communications should pass to and fro in order to get at the 
true bearing and import of the passage. The Judge is represented 
as adducing a single test, the application of which to the righteous 
and the wicked brings out one great distinctive feature of the differ- 
ence between them. It cannot surely be meant that the one point on 
which the sentence is made here to hinge constitutes the only one of 
which any cognizance will be taken, and on which the decisions of 
the day will rest; or, admitting that there are others, that it stands 
out so conspicuously above and beyond them all, that it alone is 
regarded as furnishing the ground and reason of the verdicts given. 
We are inclined rather to believe that the single point of difference 
between those on the right hand and those on the left of the Judge 
is fixed upon as in itself supplying one of the most delicate, most 

* Matt. 25 : 35-46. 



L_ 



THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 597 

discriminating, least fallible external proofs of the presence or the 
absence of that character of true discipleship to Jesus Christ, upon 
which the judgment proceeds. Outward acts or habits of the life, 
quoted and referred to by the Judge as the foundation of his judg- 
ments, could be so employed only in so far as they carried with them 
conclusive evidence as to the inner state of the mind and heart, only 
in so far as they were faithful and sufficient exponents of the inner 
springs and motives from which they flowed. But is there any kind 
or class of actions singularly and preeminently fitted, by their being 
always done by the one, and their being never done by the other, 
to mark off the true from the false, the real from the nominal follow- 
ers of the Eedeemer? I apprehend there is — the very kind and 
class of deeds which the Judge here lays his hand upon as charac- 
teristic of those standing on his right hand ; for it is not any or every 
kind of feeding the hungry, or visiting the sick, or clothing the na- 
ked, that will meet the description here given. Those acts of com- 
passion, love, and mercy which can alone truly and fully appropriate 
that description to themselves, must have these two peculiar qualitiec 
belonging to them: 1. They must be done to the brethren of the 
Lord, so done as to justify the strong and striking language, "I was 
a hungered, and ye gave me meat : I was thirsty, and ye gave me 
drink : I was a stranger, and ye took me in : I was sick, and ye visit- 
ed me : I was in prison, and ye came unto me." 2. They must be 
such that the doers of them were often, if not always, unconscious at 
the time that what they did was done unto Christ, else they could not 
honestly have answered as they did. 

To whom, then, does Christ refer, when he speaks of the least of 
these his brethren, the rendering of any service to whom he reckons 
as so much kindness rendered to himself? For an answer to this 
leading question I refer you to two other sayings of our Lord. The 
first occurs at the close of his address to the apostles on sending them 
forth, when, after laying down in the plainest and most emphatic 
terms the character and condition of the Christian discipleship, he 
went on to say, " He that receiveth you, receiveth me ; and he that 
receiveth me, receiveth him that sent me. He that receiveth a proph- 
et, in the name of a prophet, shall receive a prophet's reward ; and 
he that receiveth a righteous man, in the name of a righteous man, 
shall receive a righteous man's reward. And whosoever shall give to 
drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the 
name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his 
reward." Matt. 10 : 40-42. Here the kind of giving which is in no 
wise to lose its reward is not simply the giving to one of Christ's lit- 



V 

598 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

tie ones — which any one might do unawares, giving simply to the 
thirsty without regard to what they were — but it is giving to them in 
the name of a disciple. The expression, "in the name of a disciple," 
is in itself ambiguous. It might either mean giving as a disciple, 
that is, as one who bore that name or character ought to give, Dr it 
might mean giving to another because the other bore and possessed 
the character and name. There is another saying of our Lord which 
clears away this ambiguity, recorded in the gospel by St. Mark, 
chap. 9 : 41 : " For whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink 
in my name, because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you, he 
shall not lose his reward." If this and the saying already quoted be 
accepted as containing the true explanation of the words spoken by 
the Judge, his citation must be restricted to acts of kindness done to 
Christ's true disciples, on the specific ground of their character as 
such. There must be then some striking peculiarity attaching to 
such acts entitling them to be employed under such circumstances 
for so great and grave a purpose. Whatever this peculiarity be, we 
have advanced so far as to perceive that it depends on the connection 
between those to whom the kindnesses are shown and Christ. It 
must be therefore in the character of that motive which would lead 
us specially to sympathize with and to succor those standing in this 
connection. In common life there are two kinds of connection which 
one man may have with another, the existence of either of which 
might generate a claim upon our sympathy and help. There may be 
the connection of relationship, and there may be the connection of 
resemblance. You recognize the claim springing from the first of 
these when you say that you cannot see the son of your best bene- 
factor, or of your old and faithful friend, in want, unpitied and unre- 
lieved. You recognize the claim springing from the other when you 
say that one, so like in character, in principle, in taste, in habit, to 
the friend whom you admire above all others, to whom you are most 
tenderly attached, has a hold involuntarily upon your heart. Between 
the two there is this difference, that if relationship be the only ground 
on which you act, the idea of that relationship must be distinctly 
before your mind ; whereas, if it be similarity of character that sup- 
plies the impulse to benevolence, there may be at the time no felt or 
conscious reference to the person, likeness to whom may nevertheless 
form the secret spring of your conduct. As regards the union be- 
tween Christ and all his true and faithful followers, the two species 
of connection — of relationship and of resemblance — are not only 
invariably to be found together, but you have no other sure means of 
knowing where the one tie, that of discipleship, exists, but by obser- 

L 



THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 599 

vitg where the other, that of likeness, is manifested. The living 
heart-union with Christ which constitutes the central essential ele- 
ment of the Christian character, is no bare external bond, such as 
earthly relationships so often are. It never does, it never can exist 
without more or less of the spirit of the Saviour himself being poured 
into the heart, more or less of a likeness to Christ being impressed 
upon the life. To discern the image of the Saviour so produced, in 
its dimmest and most broken, as well as in its fullest and brightest 
forms, and to feel the force of that attraction which this image exerts, 
the observer himself must have been fashioned into the same image, 
must have drunk in of the same spirit. But every one that loveth 
him that begat, loveth also all who are begotten of him; a secret 
sympathy, a bond of true and deep and everlasting brotherhood 
binds all together who are one in Christ — one in the participation of 
his Spirit; nor is it necessary to the force of that attraction being 
felt which draws them to one another, that a distinct or conscious 
regard be had either to Christ himself personally or to the common 
relationship in which they stand to him. 

" Oft ere the common source be known, 
The kindred drops will claim their own, 
And throbbing pulses silently 
Move heart to heart by sympathy." 

You may love, you may pity, you may help one of Christ's little 
ones without having Him before your thoughts, just as you may 
admire the splendor of a broken sunbeam without thinking of the 
orb of light; nay more, the farther he and the relationship are for 
the moment out of sight, the more purely and entirely that the sym- 
pathy and aid spring spontaneously from seeing and admiring and 
loving in a suffering brother the meekness and the gentleness, the 
patience and the devout submission which Christian faith inspires, 
the clearer and less doubtful the evidence that the same faith dwells 
in your own bosom, working there like results. The charity which 
flows unbidden from that inwrought kindredship of disposition by 
which all true followers of the Lamb are characterized, waiting not, 
when it sees a suffering brother, to make the inference that his be- 
longing to Christ cQnfers upon him a title to relief — springs not from 
any anticipation of reward. It flows at once out of that love to 
Christ, supreme, predominant, which has taken possession of the 
beart. And hence the explanation of the answer which the righteous 
are represented as making to the declaration of the Judge — the sim- 
ple, natural utterance of humility and surprise : "Lord, when saw we 
thee a hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 



V 

60( THE LIFE OF CHBIST. 

when saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed 
the* 3 /? or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came to thee? 
A.nd the King shall answer and say unto them, Yerily I say unto you, 
Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye 
did i* "into me." 

Should any one, then, under the impression that the first question 
to which in the great judgment he would have to give reply, would 
be this, " Did you ever relieve any of Christ's brethren because of 
their being such ?" feeling unfurnished and anxious to provide him- 
self with a sufficient and satisfactory answer, go forth immediately 
and seek out some destitute disciples and minister to their wants, 
would mich a ministry of benevolence as that suit the requirements 
of the Judge ? Assuredly not. You might to any extent feed the 
hungry, or clothe the naked, or visit the sick; those whom you thus 
clothed and fed and visited might be brethren of the Lord; nay, you 
might select them as the objects of your charity on that very account, 
and yet after all your charity might be but selfishness in disguise, 
utterly wanting that element so delicately and beautifully brought 
out in the answer of the righteous, of being the unconscious emana- 
tion of a true love and a true likeness to Jesus Christ. No charity of 
mere natural instinct, no charity of outward show or artificial fabric, 
ao charity but that which is the genuine, spontaneous, untainted prod- 
uct of a profound personal attachment to the Saviour, will meet the 
requirements of the Judge. And the more you study the deeds to 
which he points, and which are here described, the more will you be 
convinced that a more truthful and delicate test of the presence and 
power of such ?n attachment could not have been selected than that 
which the performance of such deeds supplies. 

Let us turn now for a moment to the sentence passed upon those 
standing on the left hand of the Judge : " Depart from me, ye cursed, 
into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." How 
striking the antithesis between this and the sentence passed upon 
the righteous! The "Come" of the one has its counterpart in the 
"Depart" of the other; "ye blessed," its counterpart in "ye cursed." 
But it is not, "ye cursed of my Father." The blessing had come 
from him. The Son as Judge attributes it to the Father. But the 
curse comes from another source. The Judge will not connect his 
Father's name with it. The wicked have drawn down the curse 
upon their own heads; its fountainhead is elsewhere than in the 
bosom of eternal love. The kingdom, upon the inheritance of which 
the righteous are called to enter, is not spoken of as an everlasting 
kingdom. There was no need of so describing it ; by its very nature 



THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 601 

it is a kingdom that cannot be shaken, can never be removed. But 
the fire is called an everlasting fire, to remind us that so long as ever 
in the bosom of the sinful the fuel for that flame exists, it must burn 
on, the ever sinning bringing the ever suffering with it in its traia. 
But here again there is a variation of the phrase. In the one case it 
is a kingdom prepared for the righteous themselves from the founda- 
tion of the world; in the other it is a fire prepared for the devil and 
his angels. Can we believe this variation to be unintentional and 
insignificant? Shall we not gladly accept the truth that lies conceal- 
ed in it, that God delighteth in mercy, and that judgment is his 
strange work? 

Then follows the colloquy between the Judge and the condemned, 
by far the most impressive thing in which, to our eye, being this, 
that the Judge does not in their case bring forward an opposite and 
contrasted kind or class of actions to confront with those attributed 
to the righteous, in order to indicate the presence within of an oppo- 
site character, the operation in them of an opposite class of motives. 
Against the cited deeds of mercy he does not set up as many deeds 
of selfishness, or unkindness, or cruelty. He puts the whole stress 
of the condemnatory sentence simply and alone upon the non-per- 
formance of the service of love to his brethren, and through them to 
himself. Had it been a merely moral reckoning with mankind that 
was intended to be represented here, then surely so much positive 
evidence on the one side would have been met with so much positive 
evidence on the other. Had it been meant that all men were to be 
divided into two classes, and acquitted or condemned according to 
their respective kindliness or charitableness of disposition and con 
duct, with whatever accuracy the dividing line be carried throughout 
the entire mass of mankind, such infinite variety of shades of char- 
acter and modes of conduct are there that those nearest to the line 
on one side would approach so closely to those nearest to it on the 
other, that it would be very difficult to make out the equity of an 
adjustment which would raise the one to heaven and consign the 
other to hell. It is however upon no such principle that the separa- 
tion is represented here as being conducted. The great, the primary 
requirement, the presence or the absence of which fixes the position 
of each class on the right hand or upon the left of the Judge, is love 
to Christ, likeness unto him, as tested and exhibited in deeds of kind- 
less done unto his poor afflicted suffering children. Apart from such 
fove, such likeness to the Lord himself, you cannot have the special 
affection to his brethren. That special affection cannot subsist with- 
out running out into countless acts of compassion, of needful and 



602 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

generous help. As to Christ himself, then, it is not our knowledge, 
nor our faith, that is to furnish the ground of our being numbered 
with those who are to stand on the right hand of the Judge. Infinite 
may be the variety, both in kind and in degree, of the acquaintance 
with the Saviour's character, the confidence in the Saviour's work. 
In the multitude that no man can number there be those who saw 
the day of Christ as afar off, who had but dim perceptions of the 
personal character and high office executed by the great Eedeemet 
of mankind. In one thing they shall agree : in having hearts linked 
by the tie of a supreme affection to him, in having lives pictured over 
with those many acts of loving tenderness and tender mercy here so 
Binrply and so beautifully portrayed. As to our fellow-men, again, it 
is not our honesty, our justice, our generosity, our fidelity, our natu- 
ral benevolence which is to place us on the right hand of the Judge. 
It is how we have felt, it is how we have acted towards the afflicted 
brethren of Jesus. A narrow contracted circle this may appear, yet 
one round which all the earthly virtues will be found to congregate, 
finding there the bond that binds them all together as the fruits of 
the Spirit, and wraps them all in harmonious and beautiful assem- 
blage round the cross of the Crucified. He may be a kind man who 
is not honest, an honest man who is not meek, a meek man who is 
not pure ; but, take him who feeds the hungry, who clothes the naked, 
who visits the sick, because of the spirit of Jesus implanted in his 
own soul, and because of the image of the Saviour seen on them he 
ministers to — this man's deeds of mercy will not be limited to that 
one circle ; ready to show special kindness to those that are of the 
household of the faith, he will be ready to do good unto all men as 
God gives him the opportunity. Be not then over-careful, ye who 
are members of this household, to distinguish among the poor and 
the afflicted who are daily appealing to your benevolence, who do 
and who do not belong to Christ. If so, you may be putting it out 
of your power to join in the language put into the lips of the right- 
eous, "Lord, when saw we thee a hungered?" Cultivate that large 
diffusiveness of pity and of help, that would, if it could, feed all the 
hungry, and give drink to all the thirsty, leave none who wanted 
un visited and unrelieved. "Be not forgetful," said the apostle, "to 
entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels una- 
wares." Angel footsteps no longer tread on earth, angels come not 
now to our tent-doors. For angels clothed in human forms we may 
no longer, as the patriarchs did, spread the table and lay out the 
food But a greater than angels walks among us, in suffering, in 
disguise. Christ himself is here— here in some hungry one to be fed, 



OUTLINE STUDIES 603 

some imprisoned one to be visited, some afflicted one to be comfort- 
ed. Be not forgetful to let your sympathy and help range ovei the 
whole field of suffering humanity; here and there you may be suc- 
coring your Saviour unawares ; you may be pleasing him who identi- 
fies himself with all his needy suffering children, and who will be 
ready at last to say, " Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of 
these my brethren, ye did it unto me." 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 



Perhaps before our Lord left the western slope of Olivet, or during 
the short course from that spot to Bethany, he said, " Ye know that 
after two days is the feast of the Passover, and the Son of man is 
betrayed to be crucified." 

It was at a secret session of the Sanhedrim at the house of Caiaphas 
that the plot was formed to put Jesus to death. This design was helped 
when Judas, one of the twelve, met with the Jewish leaders and cov- 
enanted for thirty silver shekels to betray his Master into their hands. 
It was an act of unspeakable baseness and treachery, the result, it 
would appear, of gradual deterioration of character through avarice 
and opposition to Christ's spiritual program. 

Then there comes a solemn pause, through Wednesday the Day 
of Retirement and the early part of Thursday, the last day with his 
Disciples. In the afternoon of Thursday our Lord sends Peter and 
John to Jerusalem to engage a room and make ready for the Passover 
meal. 

When they assemble in the evening a strife breaks out as to which 
shall be accounted the greatest. None being willing to minister, they 
sit down with unwashed feet. It is then that Jesus rises, prepares 
himself, and performs this menial service, giving them an example, 
indelible in its impressiveness. A little later there comes the exposure 
of Judas and his retirement. Not long after we have Peter's extreme 
avowal of fealty and the Master's warning that the rash disciple's 
failure and denial of his Lord is close at hand. 

The Passover meal is now concluded and Jesus proceeds to institute 
the sacred memorial of the gift of himself for the life of mankind. 
Intimate, wonderful discourses and the high-priestly prayer follow, 
and then, accompanied by the eleven, he goes to Gethsemane. The 
agony of the garden is a part of his great sacrificial work as the Sin- 
bearer. 

Christ's request to his disciples to watch and pray, while he passed 



C03a THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

through the agony in the garden of Gethsemane, doubtless was in 
part because of his desire for human sympathy and fellowship; but it 
was more because of his knowledge that they would need the re-enforce- 
ment which prayer would bring to their souls in the trying experiences 
through which they were soon to pass. When Judas the betrayer and 
all the band that accompanied him came to the garden they found 
Jesus just risen from his knees, and therefore ready with complete 
composure and strength of spirit to meet them and go through the hours 
ever deepening with pain and buffeting till he expired on the cross. 
Our Lord scarcely appears to be conscious of his own sufferings during 
all the prolonged ordeal, and because his heart is stayed on God he is 
sensitive to the needs of every soul around him. Because the apostles, 
on the other hand, were sleeping instead of watching and praying 
they forsook him and fled in fear and confusion. 

PART IV. PASSION WEEK TO GETHSEMANE. 
Study 19. Last Supper and Gethsemane. 

(1) Looking toward Christ's betrayal 6036-605 

a. Our Lord states that he is shortly to he betrayed to be crucified .... 6036 

b. Judas meets the Sanhedrim at the house of Caiaphas 6036, 604 

c. He agrees to betray his Master for thirty shekels of silver 604 

d. What led him to the deed of treachery 604, 605 

(2) Period op Christ's retirement 605, 606 

a. From Tuesday evening to Thursday afternoon 605, 606 

6. Probably in some quiet nook near Bethany 606 

(3) Preparation for the Passover 606, 607 

a. Peter and John sent to Jerusalem to make ready 606, 607 

6. They secure a prepared room as Jesus indicated 606, 607 

(4) Jesus and the eleven assemble for the Passover meal in the even- 

ing 607-611 

a. The strife as to which of them is greatest 607 

6. Need that one should serve the others for the feet-washing 608 

c. None of the apostles are willing to do this 608, 609 

d. Typical of the love of place and pride of precedence in the 

Church. . 608, 609 

e. Jesus rises and performs the menial service 609 

/. Significance of his act 610, 611 

(5) Exposure and withdrawal of Judas 611-619 

a. Order of the paschal supper 612-613 

6. Jesus troubled in spirit 614 

c. He states that one of the twelve will betray him 614 

d. By different steps he designates Judas 615, 616 

e. Judas retires from the room 616 

/. The event interpreted 616-619 

(6) Peter's professions and Christ's prediction '. . 619-622 

a. Peter asserts that he will lay down his life for his Lord's sake. . . 619-621 

6. Christ predicts that Peter will deny him 620 

c. The invisible foe and tempter 621, 622 



THE WASHING OF THE DISCIPLES' FEET. 6036 

(7) General view of the Lord's Supper 622-630 

a. Evidence of Christ's prescience 622-624 

b. His devotion to his followers 624-626 

c. The great enduring ordinance established 626-630 

(8) Gethsemane 631-641 

a. Transition from the supper to the garden 631-635 

b. The Saviour's suffering for sin 635-638 

c. Duty of disciples to watch, pray, and suffer with the Master 639-641 



xv. 

The Washing of the Disciples' Feet.* 

THUKSDAY. 

Jesus sat down upon the Mount of Olives, over against the tem- 
ple ; and as the shadows of evening deepened in the valley of Kedron, 
and crept up its sides, he addressed to his wondering disciples the 
parables and prophecies preserved in the twenty-fourth and twenty- 
fifth chapters of St. Matthew's gospel. It was after he had finished 
all these sayings, either before he rose from his seat on the hillside^ 
or on his way out afterwards to the village, that he said to his dis- 
ciples, "Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover, 
and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified." He had previously 
in his discourse been dealing with a broad and distant future, been 
sketching the world's history, describing its close — giving no dates, 
leaving much as to the sequence of events shadowy and undefined. 
Now he turns to a nearer future, to an event that was to happen to 
himself; and in terms free of all indistinctness and ambiguity ho 
announces that the day after the next he would be betrayed, and 
afterwards crucified. 

It may have been about the very time that Christ himself was 
speaking thus of his impending betrayal and crucifixion, that a secret 
session of the Sanhedrim was assembling, not in its usual hall of 
meeting, which formed part of the temple buildings, but in the house 
of Caiaphas, which tradition has located on the Hill of Evil Counsel, 
the height rising on the other side of the city from the Mount of. 
Olives, across the valley of Hinnom. To this house of Caiaphas, 
wherever it was situated, the chief priests, and scribes, and elders of 
the people now resorted to hold their secret conclave. They met in a 

* Matt. 26 : 1-5. 14-19; Mark 14 : 1, 2, 11-17 ; Luke 22 : 1-30 ; Jonn 13 : 1- 20. 



604 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

chafed and angry mood. For three consecutive days Jesus had been 
denouncing and defying them, in the most open manner, in the most 
public places. They had tried all their art to weaken his reputation, 
to put him wrong with the people or with their rulers, to extort from 
him somo saying that might betray ignorance or involve blasphemy 
or treason. They had been more than defeated ; their own weapons 
had been turned against themselves ; the bitterest humiliation had 
been inflicted on them. There was but one remedy. They must 
meet this man in the temple courts no more. Never again must they 
allow themselves to be dragged into personal collision with him. 
There was but one seal for lips like his — the seal of death, and the 
soonet it were imposed the better. They had no difficulty in coming 
to the conclusion that he must die. But as old and practised politi- 
cians, who knew the people well, they hesitated as to the time and 
manner of taking and killing him. An open arrest at this particular 
time, when there were in and around Jerusalem such crowds of 
ignorant country-people, among them such numbers of those fiery- 
spirited Galileans, over whom Jesus had acquired so great an appa- 
rent mastery, would be perilous in the last degree. And so, curbing 
their wrath, they think it better to bide a while, and they said, " Not 
at the feast time, lest there be an uproar among the people." What- 
ever pain the self-restraint may have cost them was more than over- 
come by the joy they felt when Judas came and said, " What will ye 
give me, and I will deliver him unto you?" A hopeful sign this in 
their eyes : one of this man's bosom friends turning against him, 
having some good ground, no doubt, they think, to hate him, as he 
evidently does. He can do for them the very thing they want : put 
it in their power to seize Jesus in one of his secret haunts, and 
come upon him " in the absence of the multitude." And he is quite 
willing, obviously, to meet their wishes. Nor is he hard to bargain 
with. They offer him thirty silver shekels, the fixed price in the old 
law of the life of a servant, somewhere between three and four 
pounds of our money. He accepts the offer, and it is agreed 
between them that this sum shall be given him on his delivery 
of Jesus into their hands. Neither he nor they at first imagine 
that this will be done so speedily — even during the approaching 
feast. 

A baser piece of treachery, a fouler compact, there has never 
been. Judas may not have been an utterly false man from the very 
beginning of his attachment to Christ's person; it may not have 
been pure and simple selfishness and greed that tempted him to 
join the ranks of Christ's disciples. Once, however, admitted, to 



THE WASHING OF THE DISCIPLES' FEET. 605 

his own great surprise perhaps, among the twelve, and intrusted 
with the care of the small common fund which they possessed, the 
tow base spirit that was in him led him into all kinds of selfish and 
covetous speculations and anticipations. As our Lord's career ran 
on, it became more and more apparent that little room for indulging 
these would be given. Disappointment grew into discontent. In 
the loving, pure, unearthly, unselfish, good and holy Jesus, there 
was nothing to attract, there was much to repel. The closer the 
contact the more that repellant power was felt. Already, towards 
the close of the second year of his attachment to Christ's person, ho 
had said or done something to draw from the reticent lips of his 
Master the declaration, "Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of 
you is a devil?" John 6:70. Still later, his Master's whole bear- 
ing, speech, and conduct, his retiring from the crowd, his courting 
solitude, the deep shades of sadness on his countenance, his begin- 
ning to tell his disciples privately but plainly, that he was about to 
be taken from them, that a shameful and cruel death was about to 
be inflicted on him, all this, little as Judas, in common with the rest, 
may have understood or realized the actual issue that was impend- 
ing, ran utterly counter to all his plans and hopes. Upon dis- 
appointment, discontent, alienation, and disgust may have super- 
vened, and in so ill a mood may Judas then have been, that the 
rebuke a few days before at Bethany, Avhen he had interposed his 
remark about the box of precious ointment, had galled him to the 
uttermost, and whetted his spirit even to the keen edge of malice 
and revenge. That all this may have been so does not interfere 
with the belief that in the final stages of his treachery, other motives 
besides those of personal malice and pure greed may have entered 
into his heart and taken their share in prompting to the last black 
deed that has stamped his name with infamy. 

It would not appear that in the compact as at first made between 
Judas and the Sanhedrim, there was any stipulation as to time. 
His offer would facilitate a secret and safe arrest of Jesus, but it 
may not have at once and entirely allayed their fears as to attempt- 
ing this arrest during the feast. The conditions settled as to the 
thing to be done, and the bribe to be paid for the doing of it, they 
part, leaving it to Judas to find his own time and opportunity. 

And now in the current of a narrative, which, ever since our 
Lord's arrival in the neighborhood of Jerusalem, has been getting 
quicker and more disturbed, there is a stop, a stillness. The 
troubled waters sink lor a season out of sight, to rise again darker 
and more vexed than ever. On the Tuesday evening Jesus retired 



608 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

to Bethany, and we see nothing, know nothing of him for the next 
day and a half. The intervening "Wednesday would, no doubt, be 
given to quiet and repose. There are hollows in our own Arthur 
Seat not as far from Edinburgh as Bethany was from Jerusalem, 
in which one feels as far away from the noise and bustle of city 
life as if in the heart of the Highlands. Such was the hollow in 
which the favorite village lay, and there, in occupations unknown 
to us, this one peaceful day was spent, and there at night he had 
where to lay his head for his last sleep before his death — the night 
and day recruiting him in body and in spirit for Gethsemane and 
the cross. 

On the Thursday afternoon he once more bent his steps towards 
the holy city. He was to celebrate that evening the passover with 
his disciples. Much in the way of preparation had to be done — the 
selection of a suitable apartment, the killing of the lamb, the pro- 
viding of the bread, the wine, and the salad of bitter herbs. Nothing 
as yet had been arranged, and there was but little time to spare. 
The disciples come to him saying, "Where wilt thou that we prepare 
for thee to eat the passover?" Our Lord does not send them all at 
rand m to do the best they could; he singles out Peter and John. 
Though often singularly and closely associated afterwards, this, ] 
believe, was the only time that Christ separated them from all the 
rest, and gave them a conjunct task to perform. In sending them 
before the others, he could easily and at once have indicated where 
the room was in which they were to meet in the evening. Instead 
of this he gives them a sign, the following of which was to conduct 
them to it. This way of ordering it, whatever was its real purpose, 
served effectually to conceal from the others the locality of the 
guest-chamber, and may have been meant to keep the traitor in the 
meantime in ignorance of a fact, his earlier knowledge of which, 
communicated to the chief priests, might have precipitated the catas- 
trophe, and cut off Gethsemane from our Saviour's passion. 

"Go into the city, and when you enter there shall meet you a 
man bearing a pitcher of water : follow him. And wheresoever he 
shall go in, say ye to the good man of the house, The Master saith, 
Where is the guest-chamber, where I shall eat the passover with my 
disciples ?" Upon these passover occasions the inhabitants of the 
metropolis opened their houses freely to strangers coming up from 
the country; but was there no danger, if it were known that this 
accommodation was required for him whose life the authorities were 
seeking, that it might be denied? The singular message which 
Peter and John were to deliver would reveal the very thing which, 



THE WASHING OF THE DISCIPLES' FEET. 607 

left to their own discretion, they might have wished to hide, for 
could two men in Galilean garb and with Galilean accent speak of the 
Master and his disciples, and it not be known of whom they spoke? 
Coming from such a quarter, carrying with it such a tone of author- 
ity, being, in fact, a command rather that a request, might not the 
good man of the house be offended and refuse? The instructions, 
however, are precise, and Peter and John follow them. All happens 
as Christ had indicated. They go into the city, they meet the man with 
the pitcher, they follow him, they deliver the message, and whether 
it was that the man himself was a disciple of Jesus, or that he was 
otherwise influenced, not only is there a ready and cordial compli- 
ance on his part, but, when Peter and John are shown into the 
apartment, they find it, as was not always the case, already fur- 
nished and prepared. It was a momentous meeting which on this 
last night of our Eedeemer's life was to take place in this room, one 
never to be forgotten, to be had in memory by generation after gen- 
eration, through all the after history of the church ; and everything 
about it, even to the indicating of the place and the providing of 
the needful furniture, was matter of divine foresight and care. 

The accounts of the different evangelists are so broken and con- 
fused that it is impossible to give anything like a regular connected 
narrative of what happened that night within the guest-chamber. 
At an early stage a strife broke out among the apostles as to which 
of them should be accounted the greatest. This may have hap- 
pened after the passover celebration had commenced. The first 
thing done, when the company had assembled and sat down, was to 
pass round a cup of wine, the first of the four that were circulated 
in the course of the feast. If it was in doing so that they were 
uttered, then our Lord's first words after sitting down were these: 
"With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before 
I suffer : for I say unto you, I will not eat any more thereof, until 
it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And he took the cup, and 
gave thanks, and said, Take this and divide it among yourselves : for 
I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the 
kingdom of God shall come." Luke 22:15-18. Never before had 
they sat down in such a formal manner with their Master at their 
head. The circumstance of taking their places around this board 
suggests to their narrow minds thoughts of the places and the 
dignities that, as they fancied, were afterwards to be theirs; and 
when, almost as soon as he had sat down, Jesus began to speak of 
the kingdom as if he was just about to enter on it, the strife as to 
which of them should be greatest in that kingdom arose- 



(508 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

But this strife has been attributed to another origin, one which 
links it in a manner so natural to the washing of the disciples' feet 
as to predispose us to adopt it. The master of the house had relin- 
quished for the strangers the best apartment of his dwelling, and 
furnished it as well as he could. There was one duty of the host, 
however, that he failed to discharge. He did not personally receive 
the guests, nor preside at the washing of the feet, which always 
preceded the beginning of a feast. He and his family and his 
domestics were all themselves elsewhere engaged in the keeping of 
the passover. He saw that in the room the necessary apparatus for 
the washing, the basin and the water and the towel, were all pro- 
vided, but he left it to the guests themselves to see that it was done. 
But which of the twelve will do it for the others ? It is the office of 
the servant, the slave; which of them will acknowledge that he 
stands in any such relationship to the rest? Besides the settlement 
of their respective places around the table, here was another root of 
bitterness springing up to trouble them, raising the question of pre- 
cedency among them. 

Spring up how it might, we have the fact that around the first 
communion table among the apostles, in the presence of their Mas- 
ter, in the critical and solemn position in which he and they stood, 
there was actually a quarrel about their individual rights and privi- 
leges; a petty ambition, the love of place and power, finding its way 
into the hearts of those most honored of the Lord, entering to defile 
the most sacred season and solemnity. There is some excuse for 
the twelve untaught Galilean fishermen, with all their vulgar concep- 
tions at this time of what was coming when their Master's kingdom 
should be instituted. But what shall we say of those who have had 
the full light of the after revelations given, and who, in front of our 
Lord's most solemn declaration that his kingdom is not of this world, 
that the kind of authority and lordship that kings and princes assume 
and exercise should not have place within his church, under the 
garb of a glowing zeal, harbor as strong a love of place and power 
as much vanity and pride, as much irritation of temper, as much 
severity and uncharitableness, as is ever to be seen in the world oi 
common life ? Alas for the strife of the first communion-table ! 
Alas for the strifes and debates of almost every ecclesiastical body 
which since the days of Jesus Christ has been embodied in his name 
You might have thought that in those churches where the distinctions 
were the fewest and of the least value, where there was least of that 
kind of food upon which the pride and vanity and ambition of our 
nature feed, there would have been proportionately less of their 



THE WASHING OF THE DISCll'LES' FEET. 009 

presence and power. The fact, I think, rather lies the othei way, 
for a reason not difficult to divine. 

None of the twelve would do the part of the minister or the 
servant to the others; and so, grumbling among themselves, they sit 
down with unwashed feet. Jesus rises from the table, lays aside his 
apper garment, pours water into the basin, takes the towel, girds 
himself with it, and begins himself to do what none of them would 
undertake. One of the first before whose feet the Saviour stooped 
may have been Judas. We shall see presently that he has thrust 
himself into a seat very near to, if not the next to that of Christ. 
He allows his feet to be washed, not without a certain strange feel- 
ing in heart, but without word spoken or remonstrance made. But 
when Jesus approaches Peter, the impetuous apostle cannot remain 
silent. "Lord," he says, lost in wonder, full of reverence, profoundly 
sensible of the great gulf that separated himself and all the rest from 
Jesus — "Lord, dost thou wash my feet?" He gets the calm reply, 
"What I do thou knowest not now;"- — 'thou hast not yet dis- 
cerned — though it needed no quick eye to see it — the purpose of rny 
act; but thou shalt know hereafter, shalt know presently.' But the 
impatient apostle will not submit and wait. Strong in his sense of 
the unseemliness, the unsuitableness of the act, fancying that the 
very love and reverence he bore to Jesus forbade him to permit it, 
he declares, "Thou shalt never wash my feet." "If I wash thee not, 
thou hast no part with me," is Christ's reply — a single slender beam 
of light upon the darkness, enough to point to some higher spiritual 
meaning of the act, not enough to reveal the whole significance of 
the transaction to Peter's mind, but quite enough to turn at once 
into quite an opposite channel the current of his feelings. "No part 
with thee if thou wash me not ! then, Lord, not my feet only, bat 
also my hands and my head." Taking up once more his act in its 
symbolic character, as representative of the spiritual washing by 
regeneration, Jesus saith to him, "He that is washed needeth not 
save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit." For even as he who 
in the ordinary roadway cleanses himself from outward defilement is 
clean every whit, and needs no after washing save that of the feet — for 
go where he may upon the dusty roads, every hour, and. at all times, 
the feet are being soiled, and need renewed, repeated washings — so 
is it true of him who hath gone down into the great layer, and 
washed all sins away in the blood of the atonement, that he is clean 
every whit, has all his sins forgiven, all the guilt of them removed, 
and needs no after washing, saving that which consisteth in the 
removal of the daily stains that are ever afresh, by our converse 

LU.ofUhrUi 89 



610- THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

with this world, being contracted. "And ye are clean," added 
Jesus, "but not all." The words, but faintly understood, yet so 
calmly and authoritatively uttered, effect their immediate object. 
Peter silently submits; the work goes on; the circle is completed. 
The feet of all are washed, no one after Peter venturing to resist 01 
remonstrate. 

The feet-washing in the guest-chamber by our Lord himself we 
are inclined to regard as the greatest instance of his humiliation as a 
man in the common intercourse of life, in the discharge of its ordinary 
duties. He was at pains himself to guard it against misinterpreta- 
tion : " So, after he had washed their feet, and had taken his gar- 
ments, and was set down again, he said unto them, Know ye what I 
have done to you ? Ye call me Master and Lord : and ye say well ; 
for so I am." It was his being so infinitely their superior that lent 
its grace and full significance to the act. And this superiority, so far 
from cloaking, or with false humility pretending to disown, he asserts. 
This is what makes the whole ministry of our Lord on earth so utterly 
unlike that of any other man who has ever trodden it. No one ever 
made pretensions so high ; no one ever executed offices more humble. 
No one ever claimed to stand so far above the ordinary level of our 
humanity ; speaking of himself as the light of the world, having rest 
and peace and life for all at his disposal, to dispense as truly loyal 
gifts to all who owned him as their spiritual King. No one ever made 
himself more thoroughly one with every human being whom he met, 
or was so ready with all the services that in his need one man may 
claim from his brother. 

"If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye 
ought also to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an 
example, that ye should do as I have done unto you." With that 
greatest of all examples before us, what act, what office of human 
kindness naturally laid upon us should we ever count too low, too 
mean — should we shrink from, because of any idea that it would bo 
a humiliating of ourselves before our fellow-men to undertake it ? It 
is indeed an utter mistaking of this example to suppose that it calls 
us to a repetition of the very act of Christ. Only if there be feet 
needing to be washed, which the custom of the time and country 
requires to be washed, while there is no one else upon whom the duty 
properly devolves, only then does the example of Jesus call to a lit^ 
eral imitation of what he did. His own act stands before us, not a& 
a model act to be exactly copied, but as an act representative to us 
of the whole circle of kindly offices that we are called upon to render 
to one another, and as illustrative of the humble, self-denying spirit 



THE EXPOSUEE OF JUDAS. 611 

in which all these offices should be discharged. You are all aware 
that, on each returning Maundy-Thursday, the day before Easter, 
the pope washes the feet of twelve poor men. A better comment has 
never been made upon the act than the one made long ago by Ben 
gel. "In our day," he says, "popes and princes imitate the feet- 
washing to the letter, but a greater subject for admiration would be, 
for instance, a pope in unaffected humility washing the feet of one 
king, (his own equal in rank, and so the exact analogue to the disci- 
ples' mutual washing of each other as brethren,) than the feet of 
twelve paupers." So true were the Saviour's words that went to 
indicate the difficulty which lay in a faithful following of the example 
that he had just been setting : " If ye know these things, happy are 
ye if ye do them." So easy is it to violate the spirit by sticking to 
the letter of a precept; so easy for pride to take the form of humility. 



XVI. 

The Exposure of Judas.* 

THUESDAY 

The four evangelists agree in stating that it was upon a Sunday, 
the day after the Jewish Sabbath, that our Lord rose from the grave, 
and that it was on the day preceding this Sabbath that he was cru- 
cified. They all assign the same events to the same days of the 
week : the last supper to Thursday evening, the crucifixion to Friday, 
the lying in the tomb to Saturday, the resurrection to Sunday. But 
there is a marked discrepancy in the accounts of the three earlier 
evangelists as compared with that of St. John, as to the relation of 
these days of the week to the Jewish days of the month and of the 
feast. If we had only the narratives of St. Matthew, St. Mark, and 
St. Luke before us, we must at once have concluded that our Lord 
partook of the passover supper at the same time with the Jews. Od 
the other hand, if we had only the narrative of St. John before us, 
we should as naturally have concluded that it was upon the evening 
after the crucifixion, that the paschal supper was observed generally 
by the Jews, and that Jesus must have antedated his observance of 
it, partaking of it a day before the usual one, on the evening of the 
thirteenth day of the month Nisan. The removal of this discrepancy 
i* one of the most difficult problems with which harmonists of the 

• Matt. 26 : 21-25 ; Mark 14 : 18-21 ; Luke 22 : 21-23 ; John 13 : 21-35. 



612 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

gospels have had to deal, nor is there any single question touching 
the chronology of our Saviour's life upon which more labor and learn- 
ing have been bestowed. The success has not been equal to the 
pains bestowed. The matter still remains in doubt. No doubt what 
ever exists as to the fact that, whether he anticipated the ordinarj 
time or not, it was that he might observe the Jewish passover with 
his disciples, that our Lord, on the night of his betrayal, sat down 
with his twelve apostles in the guest-chamber at Jerusalem. 

In the paschal supper, as then observed, (and we cannot well ima- 
gine that our Lord would deviate to any great degree from the cus- 
tomary manner of its observance,) four, and on some occasions five 
cups of wine were circulated among the guests, marking different 
stages of the feast. When the company, which ordinarily was not 
less than ten, nor more than twenty,* had assembled and ranged 
themselves round the tables, the first cup of wine was filled, and the 
head of the family (for we are to look upon this ordinance as essen- 
tially a family gathering) pronounced a blessing on the feast and on 
the cup, using the expression, " Praise be to thee, O Lord our God, 
the King of the world, who hast created the fruit of the vine." After 
the blessing, the cup was passed round, and the hands were washed. 
The bitter herbs, dipped in vinegar, were then placed upon the table, 
and a portion of them eaten in remembrance of the sorrows of the 
Egyptian bondage. After this the other paschal dishes were brough t 
in : the charoseth or sop, a liquid compounded of various fruits and 
mingled with wine or vinegar, into which pieces of bread were dipped ; 
the cake of unleavened bread ; and finally the roasted lamb, placed 
before the head of the company. Then followed the questions and 
explanations put and given in accordance with the instructions of 
Moses: "And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say 
unto you, What mean ye by this service ? that ye shall say, It is the 
sacrifice of the Lord's passover, who passed over the houses of the 
children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and deliv- 
ered our houses." Exod. 12 : 26, 27. They sang then together the 
first part of the Hallel or song of praise, embracing the one hundred 
and thirteenth and one hundred and fourteenth psalms, and the sec- 
ond cup of wine was drunk. Then began the feast proper: the 
householder, taking two small loaves, breaking one of them in two, 
laying the pieces upon the whole loaf, wrapping the whole in bitter 
herbs, dipping it in the sop, and eating it, with the words, " This is 
the bread of affliction which our fathers ate in Egypt." Next came 

* It might be one hundred, if each could have a piece of the lamb as large aa 
an olive. 



THE EXPOSURE OF JUDAS. 613 

the blessing upon each kind of food as it was partaken of, the pas- 
chal lamb being eaten last, and the third cup, called the cup of bless- 
ing, was drunk. The remainder of the Hallel, the psalms from the 
one hundred and fifteenth to the one hundred and eighteenth, were 
sung or chanted, with which the celebration ordinarily concluded. 
Occasionally a fifth cup was added, and what was called the Great 
Hallel (Psa. 120-137) was repeated. 

It was after the strife and the feet-washing, and coincident with 
the circulation of the first of these passover cups, that our Lord used 
the words recorded in the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eigh- 
teenth verses of the twenty-second chapter of St. Luke : "And he said 
unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you 
before I suffer." Clear before the Saviour's eye were all the scenes 
of the impending midnight hour in the garden, the next forenoon in 
the jadgment-hall, the afternoon upon the cross. He stood touching 
the very edge of these great sufferings. The baptism that he had to 
be baptized with was now at hand — and how was he straitened till it 
was accomplished ! — a few quiet hours lay between him and his en* 
trance into the cloud. With a desire more earnest and vehement than 
on any other occasion, he wished to spend those hours with his apos- 
tles, to take his last leave of them, to give his farewell instructions to 
them. He had never before partaken of the passover with them. He 
desired to do it this once. He knew that it could never be repeated. 
He knew that this was virtually the last Jewish passover : that with 
the offering up of himself in the great sacrifice of the following day 
that long line of passover celebrations that had run now through 
fifteen hundred years, down from the night in Egypt when the first- 
born were slain, was to be brought to its close. He knew that all 
which this rite prefigured was then to be fulfilled, and that that ful- 
filment was to issue in the erection of a spiritual kingdom, in which 
other kind of ,tables were to be spread, and other kind of wine to be 
drunk. " With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you 
before I suffer : for I say unto you, I will not any more eat thereof, 
until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And he took the cup, 
and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and divide it among yourselves : 
for I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the 
kingdom of God shall come." Emphatic here is the double repetition 
of the words, " for I say unto you " — calling special attention to the 
words that followed. Responding to this call, we fix our thoughts 
upon these words; but beyond the intimation they contain of that 
being our Lord's last passover, and of his speedy entering into an 
estate altogether higher, yet in some respects alike, they remain 



614 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

almost as mysterious to us as they must have been to those who 
heard them for the first time at the supper- table. 

In washing the disciples' feet, Jvjsus had said, "Ye are clean, but 
not all. For he knew who should betray him ; therefore said he, Ye 
are not all clean." John 13 : 10, 11. So early, from the very first, 
did the thought of Judas and his meditated deed press upon the 
Saviour's spirit. When the washing of the feet was over, and Jesus 
sat down, and the repast began, they all noticed that there was a 
cloud upon their Master's countenance, and the disciple who, sitting 
next to him, could best read the expression of his face, saw that he 
"was troubled in spirit." What was vexing him ? what was marring 
the joy of such a meeting? They are not left long in doubt as to 
the cause. Christ breaks the silence into which, in the sadness of 
his spirit, he had fallen ; he speaks in tone and manner quite different 
from those of his ordinary colloquial address. And he " testified and 
said, Verily, verily I say unto you, that one of you which eateth with 
me shall betray me!" Betray him! how? for what? to what? Be- 
tray such a Master at such a time ! Bad enough for any common 
disciple to use the means and opportunities that acquaintance gave 
to effect his ruin; but for one of them, his own familiar friends, whom 
he has drawn so closely round his person, upon whom he has lav- 
ished such affection — for one of those admitted to this most sacred 
of meals, the holiest seal of the nearest earthly bond ; for one of the 
twelve to betray him ! No wonder, as the thought of all the guilt 
which such an act involved sprung up within their breasts, that they 
should be, as they were, "exceeding sorrowful;" that they should 
look "one on another, doubting of whom he spake" — fixing search- 
ing looks on all around, to see whether any countenance showed the 
confusion of felt guilt, that, after inquiring among themselves which 
of them it was that "should do this thing," they should begin, "every 
one of them, to say unto him, one by one, Is it I ? and another, Is it 
I?" You like the men that met such an announcement in such a 
way. You like them for the burning sense of shame they show at 
the very thought of there being one among them capable of such a 
deed. You like them for the strong desire that each man shows to 
clear himself from the charge. You like them for the prompt appeal 
that each man makes to Jesus. Above all, you like them that there 
is none so bold and over-confident, not even Peter, as at. once to tbink 
and say of himself that there was no possibility it could be he, but 
that all, not without some secret wonder and self-distrust, put in turn 
the question, "Lord, is it I?" All but one ! He did not at first dare 
to put this question to his Master. In the confusion, his having omit- 



THE EXPOSURE OF JUDAS. 615 

ted to do so, would not be noticed. He had returned look for look, 
as they at first scanned each other; no face calmer or less confused; 
nf one suspecting Judas. 

To the many questions coming so eagerly from all sides and ends 
of the table, Jesus made the general reply: "He that dippeth his 
iiand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me." Had there 
been but one vessel containing the paschal sauce into which all dip- 
ped, this would have been nothing more than a repetition of the first 
announcement that it was one of them now eating with him at the 
same table that should betray him. But if, as we have every reason 
to believe, there were more dishes than one upon the table, this sec- 
ond saying of our Lord would limit the betrayal to that smaller circle 
of which he was himself the centre — the three or four all of whom 
dipped into the same vessel. Within that circle was Judas, who, 
when he heard the terrible words that followed, "The Son of man 
goeth as it is written of him, but woe unto that man by whom the 
Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had 
not been born," whether from the circle having been drawn so much 
the narrower taking him in among the few, one of whom must be the 
man, or from the look of his Master being fixed on him, the spell of 
which he could not resist, or from the very burden and terror of a 
denunciation which sent a thrill through every heart, could no longer 
remain silent, but said to Jesus, as the others had done before, "Mas- 
ter, is it I?" Jesus said unto him, "Thou hast said;" that is, "Yes, 
thou art the man." 

We have the express testimony of the fourth evangelist that no 
man at the table but hirnself knew for what purpose Judas at last 
went out, that none of them at this time suspected him as the be- 
trayer. No man at the table then could have heard that answer of 
our Lord; a thing that we can scarcely imagine how it could be, but 
by supposing that Judas lay upon the seat immediately next to Jesus 
on the one side, as John lay upon the one nearest to him on the 
other. Assuming this, Jesus might easily have spoken to one so near 
in such an undertone that none could overhear. 

Let us imagine now, that close to Judas, on the same side, or one 
or two off from John, upon the other side, Peter was sitting, and the 
last incident in the strange story becomes intelligible. None have 
heard our Saviour's specific designation of the traitor to himself. The 
terrible malediction, however, pronounced upon him has whetted 
their curiosity to know who he is. Peter sees that John is the most 
likely one to find it out. If the Master will tell it to any one, it will 
be to him, he couching so close to Jesus that he has only to throw 



616 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

back his head for it to rest upon his Master's bosom. Into his ear, 
therefore, any secret may be easily and safely whispered. As Peter 
is so placed that he cannot well do it otherwise without his object 
revealing itself, by signs rather than by words he tells John to ask 
John does so, and gets an answer that was specific and unambiguous ; 
one, however, that no one at table but himself could have had any 
knowledge of. "He it is," said Jesus, "to whom I shall give a sop, 
when I have dipped it." And when he had dipped the sop, he gave 
it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. Two men of the twelve now 
knew to whom the Lord referred — Judas, on the one side, to whom 
Jesus had directly said, "Thou art the man," and John, now, on the 
other, to whom the sign was as explicit as any words could be — a 
sign, however, only to John himself, the others not having heard the 
words that gave the act its meaning. The giving of the sop to him 
decided the course of the betrayer. " That thou doest," said Jesus 
to him, "do quickly." He arose and went out immediately; and it 
was night. And into that night he went carrying a blacker night 
within his own dark breast. And now, how are we to interpret this 
striking passage in the history of our Lord ? 

1. This exposure and denunciation of the traitor may have been 
one of the needful steps in the accomplishment of the divine designs, 
Judas had already made a compact with the chief priests to delivei 
Jesus into their hands. But of the time and manner of that deliver- 
ance nothing had been said. As to these, nothing had been resolved 
on. We may well believe that Judas entered the guest-chamber 
without any premeditated purpose of executing his design that night. 
The discovery, however, that his Master already knew all that he 
had done, all that he meant to do, the judgment passed, the terrible 
woe denounced on him, instead of checking him in his career, served 
but to spur him on, and form within him, and fix the purpose to go 
and do that very night the thing he had engaged to do. Operating 
in this way, what was said and done by Jesus may have contributed 
to the accomplishment within the appointed time of the predeter- 
mined counsel and purpose of the Most High. 

2. We have Christ's own authority for saying that one of his 
reasons for acting as he did towards Judas was to afford to the 
other apostles an evidence of his Messiahship. "I speak not of you 
all," he had said; "I know whom I have chosen: but that the Scrip- 
ture may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up 
his heel against me. Now I tell you before it come, that, when it is 
come to pass, ye may believe that I am he." Had nothing been 
said beforehand by Jesus, had everything run the course it did, 



THE EXPOSUKE OF JUDAS. 617 

their Master remaining apparently in profound ignorance of bow his 
arrest in the garden was to be brought about, then to the apostles' 
eyes this mystery would have hung around the whole procedure : that 
Tesus had been deceived, had suffered a traitor to enter unknown 
tnd undetected into the innermost circle of his friends, had fallen 
by an unexpected blow from the hand of one fancied to be friendly, 
As it was, what a proof had the apostle set before their eyes, that 
Jesus knew what was in man, and needed not that any one should 
tell him what was in man. None of them had distrusted Judas. 
He could have given no patent proof of his falseheartedness. He 
had kept up the appearance of true friendship to the last, so as to 
deceive every other eye. Yet when all is over, and they recall what 
their Master had said a year before his death, that one of them was 
a devil, and remember especially the sayings of the guest-chamber, 
how vividly would the conviction come home to the minds of the 
apostles, that they had to do with one from whom no secrets were 
hidden, before whose all-seeing eye every heart lay naked and bare ! 
3. Let us see here an exhibition of the humanity of Jesus, his 
being truly one of us, with all the common sensibility of our nature, 
moral and emotional. There is nothing that the human heart so 
shrinks from and shudders at as treachery in a friend; the wearing 
of a mask, the acceptance of all the tokens and pledges of affection, 
fhe profession of admiration, attachment, love, yet deep within cold- 
ness, sullenness, selfishness, a waiting for and seeking for oppor- 
tunity to make gain of the cultivated friendship, and a readiness, 
when the time comes, to sacrifice the friend on the altar of pride, or 
covetousness, or ambition. And if Jesus resented the hypocrisy and 
treachery of Judas, if his spirit recoiled from near contact with the 
traitor, if when these last hours had come which he wished to spend 
alone with those he had loved so well and was loving now, if that 
could be, better than ever the nearer the hour of his departure 
came — he felt as if that guest-chamber were defiled by such a pres- 
ence as that of Judas, and felt burdened and restrained till he was 
gone, what is this but saying that there beat in him the same heart 
that beats in all of us, when that heart is right within? One object 
of the Saviour in so soon introducing the topic of his betrayal may 
have been to get rid of a presence felt to be incongruous, felt to be 
a restraint. He had much to say that was for the ear of friendship 
alone. He had to open up his heart in a way that no one would 
*^-j>k to do before the cold and the unsympathizing, much less before 
the alienated and the hostile. It may have been with the feeling 
that the sooner he was gone the better, that Jesus said to Judas, 



618 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

"What thou doest, do quickly." One thing at least is evident, that 
it was with a burst of elation and joy, as one escaping from under 
a dull and heavy pressure that crushed the spirit into sadness, that 
Jesus spoke to the others instantly on Judas being gone. "There- 
fore, when he was gone out, Jesus said, Now is the Son of man 
glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God be glorified in him, 
God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify 
him. Little children, yet a little while I am with you," and so on 
throughout all the remainder of the feast he speaks and acts with a 
free unburdened heart. 

4. There is more than the humanity here; there is the divinity 
of our Lord. He assumes and exercises the office of the Judge. 
He is a God to Judas. He takes this man into his hands, and deals 
with him as none but God had a right to do. I speak not of that 
knowledge which laid bare to him all that he had in his heart to do, 
but of his dooming him as he did; his pronouncing over him the 
most terrible sentence that was ever pronounced over a human 
being on this side eternity: "Woe to that man; it had been good 
for that man if he had not been born !" That there was tender- 
ness and pity, infinite pity and infinite tenderness in the heart of 
Jesus for Judas, who can doubt ? That in dealing with him as he 
did in the guest-chamber, he was giving him another and last oppor- 
tunity of repentance I do most thoroughly believe. What way could 
you take more fitted to turn any man from a crime that you knew he 
meditated, than the telling him beforehand that you knew all that 
he intended and had planned to do, and by denouncing the crime 
contemplated in the strongest terms you could employ? That a 
purpose of mercy lay embedded in our Lord's treatment of Judas is 
not disproved by the fact, that instead of working anything like 
repentance, it stirred up the malicious feelings to an intenser activity. 
That fact, like the thousand others of like kind that are daily, hourly 
happening in God's moral government of our race, only shows that 
the very goodness and grace of the Most High, the wisdom, purity, 
and holiness of his law, are too often turned by the perverse spirit 
that is in us into incitements to a bolder and more determined 
resistance to his authority. The case of Judas, in this stage of it, 
is but another instance of what is a very common experience, that if 
a man have once fairly committed himself to a certain course, have 
resolved to brave all its perils in order to realize its fancied gains, 
be becomes so self-blinded, so impetuous, so impatient of all check 
or hinderance, that anything whatever thrown in his way, however 
fitted in itself to warn and check, becomes but as a goad in the side 



PETEE'S PROFESSIONS. 619 

of a fiery steed, driving him the more fiercely on his career. But is 
it over one whom mercy and love have followed to the farthest limits, 
and have been obliged at last to let go, that the fearful sentence is 
pronounced : " Woe to that man ; it had been better for him that he 
had not been born!" Does he who says that know it to be true? 
He can know it only by his being one with God. Has he who pro- 
nounces this doom a title to do so ? He can have it only by challen- 
ging to himself the prerogatives of the supreme Judge of all mankind. 

5. Let us look on with wonder and awe as there is opened here 
to our view in one of its depths, the great mystery of this world and 
of God's wise and holy government of it. "It had been better for 
that man that he had not been" — but why then was he born? A 
great crime is made to minister to the greatest act and instance of 
the divine love, yet the criminal is stripped of no part of his guilt. 
"The Son of man goeth as it is written;" that writing is but the 
expression of the divine will; that will is sovereign, just, and good; 
yet woe to the man by whom the Son of man is betrayed ! human 
freedom, human agency, human guilt taken up into that vast and 
complicated machinery by which the counsels of the Most High 
God are carried out. "Oh the depth of the riches, both of the wis- 
dom and knowledge of God ! how unsearchable are his judgments^ 
and his ways past finding out!" "Thou wilt say unto me, Why 
doth he yet find fault ? for who hath resisted his will ? Nay but, O 
man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing 
formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus ? 
For who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his 
counsellor ? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things, 
to whom be glory for ever. Amen." 

After Judas left the room, our Lord said, " Little children, yet a 
little while I am with you. Ye shall seek me: and as I said unto 
the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come ; so say I now to you." 
The words struck upon Peter's ear, and set his quick spirit working. 
Another intimation this of some mysterious movement about to be 
made. Keeping the words before him, so soon as a convenient 
pause occurred, Peter said unto Jesus, "Lord, whither goest thou? 
Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now ; 
but thou shalt follow me afterwards." The answer should have 
satisfied him — should have repressed at least the curiosity which it 
was obviously not Christ's purpose to satisfy. But the pertinacious 
apostle will not accept the mild rebuke that it contains; he will still 
go on, be still more urgent. He had already got one check at the 
feet-washing, from which it cost him little to recover. He may have 



620 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

been somewhat tremulous when with the rest he put the question to 
Jesus, "Lord, is it I?" But he has recovered himself, and is ready- 
now to say almost anything to his Master, almost anything of him- 
self. "Lord," he replies, "why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay 
down my life for thy sake." Let us do Peter the justice to believe 
that this was not altogether a vain and empty boast ; let us believe 
fchat if his Master's life had been threatened by open violence he 
would have stood by him to the last, and perilled or lost his own 
life in his defence. He was one of the two who, strangely enough, 
perhaps suspecting something from the temper of the rulers, had 
brought a sword with him into the guest-chamber. And he proved 
in the garden that he was ready to meet the risks that the use of 
that weapon brought with it. It was in another kind of courage 
than the physical one that he was to prove himself so bankrupt. 
Still there was no small measure of presumption in his being so free 
with the expression of his readiness to lay down his life, a presump- 
tion which Jesus met by saying first, with gentle irony, " Wilt thou 
lay down thy life for my sake?" and then adding, "Verily, verily, I 
say unto thee, The cock shall not crow" (the time of the cock-crow- 
ing, a division of the Jewish night, shall not pass), "till thou hast 
denied me thrice." 

The feast goes on. Some unrecorded observation has been 
made by Peter in the name of the others as well as of himself, when 
our Lord turns to him and says, " Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath 
desired to have you;" to have you all, (the word here used took in 
the others as well as Peter,) "that he might sift you as wheat; but 
I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not : and when thou art 
converted, strengthen thy brethren" — another and most impressive 
warning which should have sent his thoughts into another channel, 
but he is back again to his first position. Jesus had said nothing 
open of any peril to himself, but the apostle cannot get it out of his 
thoughts. "Lord," he says, "I am ready to go with thee to prison 
and to death." He gets in answer the same distinct prediction, that 
before the dawn he should thrice deny his Lord. 

The feast is over. They are on the way out to Gethsemane, 
when Jesus says to the group around him, " All ye shall be offended 
because of me this night : for it is written, I will smite the Shepherd, 
and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered." There was nothing 
to call for Peter's intervention here. But he cannot be silent; he 
must step forward and put himself above all the others. "Though 
all shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended." 
Once more, for the third time, the prediction of his three denials is 



-. 



PETER'S PROFESSIONS. 621 

rung in his ears, but with no effect. "But he spake the more vehe- 
mently, If I should die with thee, I will not deny thee. Likewise 
also said they all." Yet within an hour they all had fled, and within 
three hours the three denials had taken place. How are we to 
look upon so singular a display of such sustained, reiterated, most 
obstinate, and boastful self-confidence ? Something we must attrib 
ute to the excitement of the occasion, but more to the natural temper 
of the man. The last few days had been swelling the tide of Pharisaic 
indignation as it rose around Jesus in the temple, till its proudest, 
darkest waves seemed ready to burst upon and swallow him up. 
New and strange impressions of some great impending calamity, 
which all their Master's words and actions deepened, seized upon 
the apostles. There were some quiet hours for him and them in the 
guest-chamber; but calm as he was, there was a mournfulness in 
their Master's calmness, as if he sat under the shadow of some 
terrible catastrophe, and such a constant throwing out of hints as 
to its approach, that one can well believe that the spirits of the 
apostles were wrought up to a high pitch of excitement, so that 
whatever each man had in him of weakness or of strength, was just 
in the condition to come out in all its fulness; and so in all its 
fulness came out that rash, presumptuous, overtrustfulness in self, in 
which lay Peter's peculiar weakness. 

But something, too, we must attribute to another agency, which 
took advantage of all the excitement of the occasion, and wrought 
upon the temper of the man. I have already spoken of the evidence 
which, within the walls of this supper-chamber, Jesus gave of his 
eye being one that could see into the future of earthly events. But 
now the proof meets us of that eye being one that pierces beyond 
the bounds of the outward and earthly, scans the secrets of the world 
of spirits, and sees all that is there going on. It is but a glimpse he 
gives us of what he knew and saw; but how strange, how awful, 
how full of warning, how full of encouragement, that glimpse ! 
Looking at the scene in the supper-chamber with the eye of sense, 
you see twelve men with their Master at their head, in trying, 
startling circumstances ; first one and then another acting out their 
natural dispositions and characters. Looking with the eye of faith 
as Jesus lifts the veil, you see Satan tempting, Jesus praying, the 
Father hearing, the sifting suffered, the son of perdition lost, the 
boastful disciple tried, his fall permitted, the invisible shield held 
over him — his faith not suffered wholly to fail, his very fall turned 
to good account, and he by it made all the fitter to be a comforter 
and strengthener of others. 



622 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

Such was the first communion-table : around it the play of these 
spiritual agencies; by the men who sat at it the exhibitions of 
such weakness, presumption, guilt — one betraying, one denying, all 
forsaking. With such a spectacle before our eyes let us not be 
high-minded, but fear. We come to our tables of communion with 
the same weak nature that was in Judas, and Peter, and the rest; 
and Satan may be ready to enter into our heart and may be desirous 
to have us that he may sift us as wheat. The nearer we stand to 
Jesus, the greater his efforts to throw the snare around our feet bj 
which our fall may be effected. Let the self-ignorance and want of 
faith and failure in attachment that all the twelve showed that night 
shine as a beacon before our eyes, and under a trembling sense of 
our own weakness and liability to forsake or deny, or even to betray 
our Master, let us cast ourselves upon him, that for us, too, he may 
pray the Father, that in the coming hours of trial our faith fail not, 
but that through all of temptation and danger that yet awaits us 
in this world we may be safely borne, through the might of his 
strengthening presence, and to the praise of his great name. 



XVII. 

The Lord's (Supper.* 

THURSDAY. 

Let us imagine that one previously ignorant of the history of 
our religion were to set himself, in the first instance, to investigate 
the origin of the institution of the Lord's Supper. The fact that 
the entire Christian church, however its various sections may other- 
wise differ, all agree in observing this rite, is before his eyes, and he 
finds upon inquiry that it has done so for many generations past. 
Guided simply by the lights of common history, he ascertains that 
as far back as till about one hundred and thirty years after the 
time when Christ is said to have lived, there was a society calling 
itself by his name, in which this ordinance was kept. There is then 
put into his hand a copy of the New Testament, in which an account 
of its first institution is given. He finds in this book, however, so 
much that is extraordinary, that he is disposed at first to be incred- 
ulous — incredulous, among other things, as to this account. Might 
not this rite have taken its rise somewhat differently, at some after 

* Matt. 26 : 26-29 ; Mark U : 22-25 ; Luke 22 : 19, 20 ; 1 Cor. 11 : 2a-25. 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 623 

period, the narrative contrived and adapted by those who wished to 
bestow upon it as interesting a birth as possible ? A slight reflection 
resolves this difficulty. How could the men of any after period, say 
fifty or a hundred years after the death of Christ, begin then for the 
first time to keep a rite which bore upon the very front of it that it 
was kept in obedience to a command of the Saviour given on the 
night before he died? Had this command not been given at that 
time, and had the observance not at that time commenced, one can- 
not see how, without a falsehood in their hands which they could 
not but detect, any body of men could at any posterior period have 
commenced the celebration. Besides, it is expressly asserted in the 
Acts of the Apostles that the first disciples of Jesus did actually 
begin the breaking of bread in remembrance of their Master a few 
days after the resurrection, and continued it weekly thereafter. How 
could a record containing such a statement have been at any subse- 
quent time foisted upon the faith of those who had never before 
seen or heard of such an ordinance? It would have been utterly 
impossible to have gained credit for a narrative containing such a 
statement, had the statement not in point of fact been true. 

Simply and by itself, therefore, the continuous observance of this 
sacred ordinance carries with it a separate and independent proof 
that it must have commenced at the time specified in the gospel 
narrative. Assuming, then, that narrative as authentic, as being a 
trustworthy account of what was said and done by Jesus Christ 
within the chamber where he assembled with the twelve, what might 
such an inquirer as we have imagined gather from that narrative 
alone, and without going beyond its limits, as to the character of 
Christ? 

1. Would he not be struck with the manifold evidence given 
within the compass of these few hours of the prescience of Jesus, his 
minute foreknowledge of the future ? All throughout he speaks and 
acts as one who knew that this was to be his parting interview with 
the men around him, his last meeting with them before his death. 
He knew that his hour was come, that he should depart out of this 
world unto the Father. He spoke of that departure as at hand. 
Externally there was nothing to indicate that his death was so near, 
that his body was so soon to be broken, his blood to be shed. Such 
private information might have been conveyed to him as to the 
plans and purposes of the rulers, and of the compact of the betrayeT 
with them, as to satisfy him that the earliest opportunity would be 
taken to cut him off. A presentiment that his end was near might 
thus have been created, but such a presentiment could not have 



624 THE LIFE OF CHRIS1. 

exhibited the clearness and the certainty of that conviction upon 
which he acted. Besides, it was not his own future alone which was 
mapped out so distinctly before his eye. It was the future, near and 
remote, of every man around him. He tells Judas beforehand that 
he was to betray him, Peter that he was to deny him, the whole of 
them that they were that night to be offended at him and forsake 
him, that he was to be left alone. Looking still farther on, he dimly 
intimates to Peter that in his death he was to resemble his Master, 
and distinctly tells the rest that for a little while they should be sor- 
rowful, but that their sorrow should be turned into joy; that the time 
was coming when they should be put out of the synagogues, and that 
whosoever killed them should think that he did God service. Three 
times in the course of his addresses, while pre-announcing one or 
another of these events, he emphatically declares that he told them 
these things beforehand, that when all came to pass they might re- 
member that he had told them, and believe that he was the Messiah 
promised to their fathers. Pondering over the form and manner of 
the evidence thus afforded of Christ's prescience, might not our in- 
quirer say, Surely a greater than any of the old prophets is here ! 
Their knowledge of the future was derived from another, was com- 
municated as so derived. It was as the Lord revealed that they 
declared and described. To their eye there was so much light upon 
the future as God was pleased to throw upon it, but all around was 
darkness. They never assumed, and they never exercised, a power 
of foreknowing and foretelling in their own name, and without any 
limits. But here is one upon whom the power sits easily, as a natu- 
ral inherent gift, who exercises it without token of its being in any 
way limited, without any recognition of his indebtedness to another 
for the foresight he displays. 

2. Opening his mind and heart to the first impressions of the 
scene, our inquirer could not fail to be greatly struck with the strong 
considerate affection shown by Jesus to his disciples. There hangs 
around the incidents and sayings of the upper chamber the touching 
and tender interest which attaches to the last words and acts of the 
dying. When a man knows that he is speaking to his family or 
friends around him for the last time, that it is his last opportunity of 
addressing to them words of counsel and encouragement, what a 
solemnity attaches to the interview S And if he be a man of ardent 
ftffections, what love and sympathy will breathe out in his parting 
words ! The world of common life is not void of instances in which 
men so placed have risen to a heroic height of self -forge tfulness, and 
have spent their last moments in the effort to comfort and strengthen 



k. 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 625 

those they left behind. There is much, however, to distinguish this 
instance of a parting farewell from all others of a like kind. It is 
given to no man to foresee his impending sufferings, and the exact 
manner of his death, as Jesus foresaw them; nor is it given to any 
to foresee, as he did, all the after trials of those from whom he was 
to part. He knows, as he is speaking to the twelve in the guest- 
chamber, that within an hour or two he shall be lying in the great 
agony of the garden ; that he shall never close his eyes again till he 
closes them in death ; that to-morrow there await him all the moi ke- 
ries of the judgment-hall, all the shame and suffering of the cruss; 
that the shades of the next day shall darken round his sepulchre. 
But the prospect of all this, though so near, so vividly seen, ao iw- 
fully dark, has not power to withdraw his thoughts from his discir. les, 
or keep him from bestowing upon them those last hours given for 
earthly intercourse. As he speaks to them his whole heart serins 
absorbed with the one desire, to soothe, to comfort, to warn, to for- 
tify, to encourage. If he speak of his own departure, it is as if the 
thing about it that grieved him most was, that they should be left 
exposed to so many difficulties and trials when he was gone. Their 
very ignorance of what was awaiting them quickens his compassion 
and gives deeper pathos to his words. As he looks round upon the 
little flock so soon to be scattered as sheep without a shepherd, the 
coming history of each rises before his eye. There is James, who sc 
soon is to seal his testimony with his blood; Peter, who, like his 
Lord, is to be crucified; John, who is to be left survivor of them all. 
How little do these men know the kind of life that is before thorn ! 
How shall he best prepare them for it? The very frailties and faults 
that he knew they were to exhibit seem but to have added to the 
gentleness and tenderness of his love. How else shall we account 
for the manner in which he speaks of them and to them upon this 
occasion? Of them, to his Father: "Thine they were, and thou 
gavest them me, and they have kept thy word ; they have known 
surely that I came out from thee, they have believed that thou didst 
send me." To themselves : " Ye are they which have continued with 
me in my temptations. And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my 
Father hath appointed unto me." To speak in such a way as this of 
men who at the time knew so little of the real character of their 
Master, and bad so little faith; to speak thus of the very men who, 
instead of continuing with him, were all that very night to forsake 
him, what shall we say of it but that there was the very rarest exhi- 
bition here of that charity which believeth all things, thinketh no 
evil, hopeth all things; which, wherever faith, though it be but as a 

*4<* nf Obrlrt 40 



626 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

grain of musi ard-seed, is genuine; wherever devotion, though it be 
weak, is true — is ready to acknowledge and approve ? 

3. After being struck generally with the singular manifestations 
of a deep-rooted self-forgetting attachment to the twelve shown by 
Jesus all through this interview, we may imagine the attention of out 
supposed inquirer to be concentrated upon that act by which ho 
instituted an observance to be kept for ever after in remembrance of 
him. As the author of a great religious revolution, the head of a 
great religious society, it is remarkable that this is the one religious 
ceremony instituted and observed by our Lord himself. After his 
death and resurrection, he issued the command that, on being enrolled 
as his followers, all were to be baptized ; but this meeting together, 
this breaking of bread and drinking of wine in remembrance of 
him, was the single ordinance that in his lifetime he set up, and by 
his own first observance hallowed. Is there anything peculiar in his 
having done so? There is nothing peculiar certainly in the cherish- 
ing and expressing a desire to be remembered when we are gone by 
those we loved ; nothing peculiar in our leaving behind some remem- 
brancers by which our memory may be kept green and fresh within 
their hearts. But there is something more here than the expression 
of such a desire, the bequeathing of such a remembrancer. There 
is the appointment of a particular mode by which for ever after- 
wards the remembrance of Christ, and more particularly of his death 
for them, was to be sustained in the breasts of all his followers. It 
is common enough in human history to meet with periodical celebra- 
tions, anniversaries of the day of their birth, or of their death, held 
in honor of those who have greatly distinguished themselves by their 
virtues, their genius, their high services to their country or to man- 
kind. But where except here have we read of any one in his own 
lifetime originating and appointing the method by which he was to 
be remembered, himself presiding at the first celebration of the rite, 
and laying as his injunction upon all his followers, regularly to meet 
for its observance? Who among all those who have been the great- 
est ornaments of our race, the greatest benefactors of humanity, 
would ever have risked his reputation, his prospect of being remem- 
bered by the ages that were to come, by exhibiting such an eagei 
and premature desire to preserve and perpetuate the remembrance 
of his name, his character, his deeds? They have left it to other? 
after them to devise the means for doing so; neither vain enough 
nor bold enough, nor foolish enough to be themselves the framers of 
these means. Who then is he who ventures to do what none else 
ever did? Who is this who, ere he dies, by his own act and deed 



THE LOED'S SUPPER. 627 

sets up the memorial institution by which his death is to be shown 
forth? Surely he must be one who knows and feels that he has 
claims to be remembered such as none other ever had — claims of 
such a kind that, in pressing them in such a way upon the notice of 
his followers, he has no fear whatever of what he does being attrib- 
uted to any other, any lesser motive than the purest, deepest, most 
unselfish love ? Does not Jesus Christ in the very act of instituting 
in his own lifetime this memorial rite, step at once above the level 
of ordinary humanity, and assert for himself a position toward man- 
kind utterj^ and absolutely unique? 

And if, by the mere fact of Jesus Christ having erected with his 
own hand the institute by which his name and memory were to be 
kept alive, the impression might thus, and naturally enough, have 
been conveyed into the mind of our supposed inquirer, of there 
being something superhuman about him, would not this impression 
be sustained and enhanced as he ran his eye over the words which, 
on this occasion, Christ was represented as having addressed to his 
disciples? Something surely quite original, belonging to himself 
alone, was the way in which he spoke of his relationship to his own 
disciples, to all mankind, to the Divine Being whom he called his 
Father. To his own disciples you hear him saying, "I am the vine, 
ye are the branches." "Abide in me and I in you." "Without me 
ye can do nothing." "Because I live, ye shall live also." "If ye 
shall ask anything in my name, I will do it." As to all men you 
hear him sayings "I am the way, and the truth, and the life : no man 
cometh unto the Father, but by me." And as to God, "He that hath 
seen me, hath seen the Father." "Ye believe in God, believe also in 
me." "And this is life eternal, to know thee, the only true God, and 
Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee on the 
earth : I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And 
now, G Father, glorify thou me, with the glory which I had with thee 
befoie the world was." "All mine are thine, and thine are mine." 
"Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me 
where I am ; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given 
me : for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world." Gut 
of those few hours which Jesus spent with the twelve within the walls 
of the guest-chamber at Jerusalem, from what he did there, and 
what he said, how much would there be to awaken in the spirit of 
such an inquirer as we have imagined, the most intense curiosity as 
to the real character of him who appears as president in this pass* 
over celebration ; how much to carry the conviction home either that 
lie was a vain presumptuous egotist, taking a place among his fellows 



628 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

and before God to which he had no right, or he was other than an 
ordinary child of Adam, one who stood in quite a different position 
both to God and to man from that which any one before, or any one 
since in the history of our race has occupied. 

With these remarks upon the general impressions which a first 
reading of the narrative of all that happened in the guest-chamber 
might be supposed to make on the mind of an intelligent and candid 
reader, let us look with our own eyes at the different accounts which 
have been transmitted to us of the institution of the Lord's Supper. 
They are four in number. The one first written and published was 
that of St. Paul, remarkable not only as coming from one who was 
not an eye-witness, but who received it by immediate revelation from 
our Lord himself. Springing from such a peculiar and independent 
source, its concurrence with those of the three evangelists is striking 
and satisfactory; for all the four accounts do thoroughly and sub- 
stantially agree. There are indeed many verbal differences between 
them. No two of the narrators put exactly the same words in 
Christ's lips. We might have expected that if any words of our 
Lord were to be reported with exact and literal fidelity, they would 
have been those uttered by him on this occasion. That it is not so 
is one of the many proofs that it was the general meaning and sub- 
stance of what Christ said, rather than the exact expressions which 
he employed, that the sacred writers were instructed to preserve. 
Three of the four accounts agree in telling us that there was a double 
blessing or giving of thanks, the first at the breaking of the bread, 
the second at the giving of the cup. But no record whatever is 
preserved of the words in which these benedictions or prayers were 
couched ; a silence, not perhaps without reason, considering that it 
is in and by the consecration prayer of the priest, regarded as cor- 
responding to these benedictions, that the mysterious change in the 
elements is by some supposed to be effected. Two of the four ac- 
counts agree in telling us that there was an interval — how occupied 
is not told — between the two acts, that of breaking the bread and 
handing round the cup ; the one taking place while the Supper was 
in progress, the other not till it was ended. Two also of the four 
accounts agree in telling us that it was as they were eating, that is 5 
partaking in the ordinary way of the Paschal supper, that the bread 
of the new Christian rite was blessed and broken. 

It is not possible, indeed, with the broken and imperfect lights 
that we have here in hand, to have anything like a distinct concep- 
tion of the exact order of events. It is, however, almost certain, 
that it was after the paschal lamb was eaten, and towards the close 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 629 

therefore of the Jewish ordinance, that Christ either interrupted the 
ordinary course of the feast, or turned that which had been the final 
distribution of a portion of the unleavened bread to a new and pecu- 
liar use. Anyhow, we may well believe that there was something in 
oui Lord's manner when he took the loaf in hand and lifted up his 
roice in prayer, and blessed and brake, that closed every lip and fixed 
on him every eye. The wonder heightened when he said, " Take, 
eat; this is my body which is broken for you: this do in remem- 
brance of me." It may have been, we presume it was, a silent inter- 
val which occurred, till the time came for the last cup of the feast, of 
the cup of blessing, to be handed round. Having blessed it also, 
he gave it to them, saying, "Drink ye all of it: for this is my blood 
of the new testament which is shed for many for the remission of 
sins." 

How, then, we ask ourselves, after having studied as minutely as 
we can all that has been told us of the first observance of this ordi- 
nance, how, at what times, and in what manner, did our Lord intend 
that it should be celebrated in his church ? The first disciples, the 
apostles themselves, had to put the same question, and we know 
something of the way in which they answered it. They could not, 
of course, connect it any more, as Christ had done, with the paschal 
supper, but, following so far, as they thought, their Lord's example, 
they did connect it with a social meal ; and so full of love were they, 
so anxious to have the memory of their risen Saviour ever before 
them, they continued daily breaking the bread from house to house. 
The associating, however, of the religious rite with a common supper 
led speedily to abuse. The secular and the social vitiated the spirit- 
ual, till, in such a case as that which occurred at Corinth, all the 
sacredness and awe and tender love with which the bread of this 
ordinance had at first been broken, were lost amid the tumult of a 
riotous entertainment, in which some ate as the hungry eat, and in 
which others were drunken. The strong hand of St. Paul was put 
forth to check so glaring an outrage on ail the decencies of Christian 
worship. Under his rebuke the churches began to discountenance 
the practice which had opened the door to this abuse. The social 
meal, under the name of Agape, or love-feast, was dissociated alto- 
gether from the religious observance. The Lord's Supper ceased to 
be a supper. It was celebrated in the morning or mid-da}% and not 
in the evening. The daily changed into the weekly observance, where 
it long stood ; the weekly into the monthly, where it still stands in 
many churches ; the monthly, in some cases, into the yearly, as was 
long the custom in our own country. 



630 TIIE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Does not all this teach us how free in this matter the church has 
been left by its great Founder — how little he cared about the form 
as compared with the spirit in which the memory of his dying love 
was to be preserved and perpetuated? As to time, and place, and 
order, and outward circumstance, he left all loose. He framed no 
directory ; he did not even leave behind any example that could be 
exactly copied. It has been so ordered, both as to the original words 
and actions of our Lord, and the accounts that we have of them, that 
all attempts to reenact, as it were, the scene in the guest-chamber are 
futile and vain. 

Two things, indeed, appear to be essential to a right conception 
of it. First, that in some way or other we recognise this ordinance 
as a social meeting. It is by sitting down at one table, and parta- 
king together of the food spread thereon, that the ties of brotherhood 
and friendship are, in common life, expressed and maintained. And 
that true believers are without distinction and on equal terms, invited 
to sit down at the tables of the Christian communion, to be partakers 
of that one bread — is not this designed to teach them that they form 
one body, one brotherhood, all whose members should be bound to- 
gether by the spirit of love and sympathy, and readiness to bear 
each other's burdens, and to give each other help? The existing 
state of matters in our large Christian societies, when so many who 
know nothing of one another associate in this holy ordinance, stands 
in the way of this being realized. Nevertheless, it ought ever to 
be regarded as one part of its intention, to impress upon us the 
unity of the Christian brotherhood, their oneness with one another, 
and the duties of universal charity which this unity, this oneness, 
involves. 

Still more striking, however, and still more important is it, to 
notice what the source, and bond, and seal of this union of all true 
Christians with one another is, as symbolized and represented in this 
chief rite of our religion. Christ would unite us to one another by 
bringing us to the same table, and dividing out to us the same bread 
and wine. But that bread and wine, what are they ? His own body, 
his own blood; we have no true union with each other, but by and 
through such a union with himself as is represented by the image — 
almost too strong, we might think, and somewhat rude and harsh, yet 
one of the aptest that could be used — of our taking him and feeding 
upon him — eating his flesh and drinking his blood. 



OETHSEMANE. 631 

xvni. 

Gethsemane.* 

THURSDAY. 

The paschal celebration over, and his own supper instituted, 
Jesus and his disciples united in singing a hymn. We should like to 
have been told exactly what the words were, in singing which the 
voices of Jesus and the eleven blended. If, as there is much reason 
to believe, they were those of the one hundred and fifteenth, one hun- 
dred and sixteenth, one hundred and seventeenth, and one hundred 
and eighteenth psalms, with what singular emotion must our Lord 
have repeated the verses : " The sorrows of death compassed me, and 
the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow. 
Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. The 
Lord is on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto me? 
The stone which the builders refused is become the headstone of the 
corner." 

The hymn having been sung, and the words recorded in the four- 
teenth chapter of the gospel of St. John having been spoken, Jesus 
said to his disciples, " Arise, let us go hence." At his command they 
rise and are ready to follow him. But he does not immediately go 
forth. It grieves him to break up the interview. He will prolong it 
to the uttermost ; give to them the last moments that can be spared. 
As they cluster round him, he continues his address. At last it closes 
with these comforting words : " These things have I spoken unto you, 
that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribula- 
tion: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." So ended 
that discourse, which, spoken originally to a small and undistin- 
guished company in a rude upper chamber at Jerusalem, has already 
won lor itself an audience vaster and more varied than ever listened 
to tne words of any other speaker upon earth, and which has ren- 
dered but a small part of the wide service of instruction and comfort 
which it is destined to discharge to the sinful and sorrowful children 
of our race. 

Our Lord's last act of intercourse with his own in the upper 
chamber was to bear them upon the arms of faith before his Father, 
in the offering of that sublime intercessory prayer which he has left 
behind him as a specimen of the advocacy which, as their great High 
Priest* he conducts for his people before the throne. 

* Matt, 26 : 36-4G ; Mark 14 : 32 42 ; Luke 22 : 39-46. 



632 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

From the room rendered so sacred by all that had been said and 
done in it, Jesus and the eleven at last depart. It vas near mid- 
night, but the full moon lighted them on their way. They passed 
out of one of the city gates, descended into the valley of Jehosha- 
phat, crossed the Kedron, and made their way to the garden of Getb- 
semane,* the well-known retreat where Jesus had often lately spent 
the night; consecrating beforehand the scene of his great agony by 
seasons of solitary prayer. At the entrance to this garden Jesus 
said to his disciples generally, " Sit ye here, while I go and pray yon- 
der." There was nothing strange in his desiring to be alone.. He 
had often before severed himself in like manner from the twelve. 
But there was something singular in it — showing that he was looking 
forward to something more than an ordinary night of solitary rest or 
prayer — -when, instructing the others to remain where they were, he 
took Peter, and James, and John along with him farther into the 
interior of the garden. They had been the three chosen and honored 
witnesses of his transfiguration on the mount. Was it to behold 
some new display of his power and glory that they were taken now 
again apart ? Was the Father about to answer the petition so lately 
offered, and in their presence to glorify his Son ? Were they again 
to gaze upon their Master clothed in light, shining all over with a 
brightness that would throw the moonlight which bathed them into 
shadow? Wondering what was to come, Peter, James, and John 
follow their Master as he leads them into the recesses of Gethsem- 
ane, towards some spot perhaps which overhanging olive-branches 
or the swelling hillside shaded, intercepting the moonbeams. Ere 
they reach that spot he turns to speak to them. There is a great 
change upon his countenance, but it is into gloom, not into glory. 
He looks as one "sore amazed and very heavy," upon whose spirit 
the horror of some great darkness, the pressure of some great bur- 
den, has fallen. He speaks, but the calmness and serenity which 
had breathed in every tone of his voice are gone. " My soul," he 
says to them, " is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." Strange 
aspect for their Master to wear; strange words for him to speak! 
They had never seen that countenance so overshadowed. They had 
never heard him utter such mournful language. What can it be that 
has wrought so sudden a change ? What deep trouble of the soul is 

* However ready to do so, we could not, when in its neighborhood, persuade 
ourselves that the traditional is the real Gethsemane. It is too close to the city 
and too near a road which, at least in passover times, must have been a very 
public thoroughfare. Higher up the valley of Jehoshaphat there is a recess in 
the western slope of Mount Olivet which seemed to us much more likely fcc 
have been the scene of our Lord's agony. 



GETHSEMANE. 633 

it that vents itself in these words ? Peter perhaps might have put 
some question to his # Master, but the time is not given him. "Tarry 
ye here," Christ adds, "and watch with me." Leaving them in their 
turn amazed, he withdraws from them about a stone-cast, (forty or 
fifty yards,) not so far off but that they can see, and even hear him. 
He reaches the shaded spot, he kneels, he falls upon his face, and 
from the piostrate form the prayer goes up to heaven: "O my Fa- 
ther, if it be possible, lefc this cup pass from me : nevertheless, not as 
I will, but as thou wilt." It may have been but a short time that 
Jesus remained in this posture of prayer. Brief as it was, on rising 
and returning to where he had left the three disciples, he found them 
sleeping. Waking them, and singling out Peter, the one of whom 
this should have been least expected, he says to him, " Simon, sleep- 
est thou ?" Mark 14 : 37. * After all your late professions of being so 
willing to follow me to prison and to death, "what, couldst not thou 
watch with me one hour ?" ' Then to him and to the others he says, 
" Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation : the spirit indeed 
is willing, but the flesh is weak." How did the Saviour look, on this 
his first return from the place of his agony ? Was the trouble gone 
from his countenance? did nothing but the shadow of it remain? 
The interval must have brought some relief. When he rose from the 
ground, retraced his steps, bent over his disciples, stirred them up 
from their slumbers, spoke to them as he did, is it not evident that 
for the time the current of his thoughts was changed ; a temporary 
calm was spread over his troubled spirit; the inward conflict was not 
such as that which had cast him on the ground, and drawn from him 
the prayer to his Father? Again, however, our Lord leaves the 
three and retires to the same spot. As he reaches it, the heavy agony 
is again upon his soul — heavier, if that could be, than before. Again 
it bows him to the earth ; again he prays as before, but now still more 
earnestly, the inward pressure telling so upon the outward form, 
that his sweat is " as it were great drops of blood falling down to the 
ground." The human power to bear, strained to its utmost limits, 
seems ready to give way. There appears " an angel from heaven 
strengthening him." And now there is a second pause or interval of 
respite, in which the three are visited a second time, and a second 
lime found sleeping. But he does not waken them as he had done 
before ; or if he does, he does not stay to speak to those whose eyes 
are heavy, and who "wist not what to answer him." He is content 
lo stand for a moment, bending on them a look of compassion and 
unutterable love. The call to the struggle comes again. A third 
time he is on the cold, bare earth; a third time the same words, ej« 



634 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

pressive of the same inward conflict and suffering, go up to heaven. 
The thrice-repeated prayer is so far answered. The strength is given, 
the conflict is over. " Then he cometh to his disciples and saith unto 
them, Sleep on now, and take your rest : behold, the hour is at hand, 
and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners." Even as 
he speaks he hears the sound of approaching footsteps, or catches 
sight of the high priest's band, with the traitor at its head, and so 
he adds, " Rise, let us be going : behold, he is at hand that doth 
betray me." From face and form and voice and spirit every trace of 
the inward tumult and agony is gone. Never perhaps in all his life 
did the Saviour appear in calmer, serener dignity then when he step- 
ped forth to meet the betrayer : nor did the calmness and serenity for 
a moment forsake him, all through the trial, and the mocking, and 
the scourging, and the crowning with thorns, and the nailing him to 
the cross. Nor did the soul-conflict and soul- agony return till, from 
the midst of the darkness that for three hours wrapped the cross, we 
hear a cry, kindred to those which cleft the midnight air within Geth- 
semane, " My God, my God ! why hast thou forsaken me ?" 

Passing with Jesus from the upper chamber into the garden, one 
of the first impressions made upon us is that of the suddenness and 
greatness of the transition. Delivered within the compass of the 
same hour, what a contrast between the prayers of the one place and 
of the other — the one so calm, so serene, so elevated; the others so 
dark and troubled ! Look first at him as, with eyes uplift to heaven, 
he offers up the one ; look at him again as, prostrate on the earth, in 
garments moist with sweat and blood, he offers up the other. Listen 
to him as, speaking on a level with the throne itself, he says, " Fa- 
ther, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where 
E am, that they may behold my glory." Listen to him as, in peti- 
tions brief and broken, wrung from a spirit torn with most intense 
sorrow, he says, " Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." 
What a mighty and mysterious descent from that height above to 
these depths beneath ! And how rapidly described ; the transition 
so quick, with nothing outward to account for it. If it be, as we 
know it is, a severe trial for our humanity to pass rapidly from one 
extreme of emotion to another, if the trial be greater the stronger the 
contrast between the two states of feeling, and the quicker the change 
takes place — if rapid passage from extreme joy to extreme grief, or 
the reverse, have been known even to loose the silver cord and break 
the golden bowl of life — let us ask ourselves to what a trial, apart 
from all consideration of the depth or intensity of the emotions them- 
selves, must the humanity of our Lord have been exposed during the 



GETHSEMANE. 63b 

last twelve hours before his death, arising from the very suddenness 
and greatness of those alternations through which he passed. 

But wherein did the great sorrow which came upon him in Geth- 
semane consist ? It is inconceivable and inadmissible that it was the 
prospect of those outward sufferings and that bodily death which lay 
between him and the grave in which he was next day to be laid, that 
agitated to such an extreme degree the spirit of our Saviour, and 
wrung from him the thrice-repeated prayer. Admitting to the fullest 
extent that our nature shrinks from suffering, recoils from death ; 
that suffering and dying are those strange things " for which human 
nature in the beginning was not created;" that the purer, fuller, more 
perfect that nature is — the more abhorrent to it they must be, and 
that, consequently, the intensity of the shrinking, the depth of the 
recoil, would be at its maximum point in the sinless humanity of our 
Lord — yet are there overbalancing considerations which forbid the 
idea that had it been mere ordinary sufferings, such as any other man 
placed in the same circumstances might have felt, and a mere ordi- 
nary death that Jesus had before him, he would or could have shrunk 
in such a way beneath the prospect. For let us remember that if, on 
the one hand, we attribute to Christ every sinless infirmity to which 
our nature is liable, on the other hand we must attribute to him every 
rirtue, and that in its highest quality and degree of which that nature 
is capable, and among these patience and fortitude. Other men have 
endured as much physical suffering, have passed through as igno- 
minious and as torturing deaths, without the slightest ruffling of spirit, 
with the calmest and most heroic fortitude, mingling even ecstatic 
songs of praise with the sounds of the crackling fagots by which their 
bodies were consumed. Are we to degrade our Saviour beneath the 
common martyr-level, or believe that a burden that others bore so 
easily prostrated him in the garden, forced from him those prayers, 
and wrapped him in that bloody sweat? 

It is true indeed that Christ had a clear and perfect vision before- 
hand of all that he was to endure, such as no other can have, and 
this may have heightened the power of the dark prospect that lay 
before him. But such a vision was his from the beginning. Why 
was it only now, here at Gethsemane, that it so specially and deeply 
affected him? Besides, his complete and accurate foreknowledge 
extended beyond the cross, embraced the resurrection and ascension. 
If in the foreground there were humiliation, suffering, and death, in 
the background were exaltation and triumph. Should not the depres 
sion produced by the vivid foresight of the one, have been relieved bj 
the hope and joy excited by the as vivid foresight of the other ? 



636 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Belinquishing the idea that it was the prospect of the physical 
sufferings of the cross that induced the agony of the garden, it may 
be thought that this agony was due to the presentiment of that deep- 
er inward woe which wrung with such bitter anguish the spirit of our 
Lord, from the hidden depths of which there went up the mysterious 
utterance, "My God, my God! why hast thou forsaken me?" But is 
this likely? With us imagination may swell out some threatening 
and impending calamity into such false proportions, that we may 
actually suffer more from the anticipation than from the reality. 
Could it have been so with Christ ? In a mind like his, where all the 
faculties and feelings of our nature existed in perfect balance, we 
should naturally expect that the due proportion would be observed 
between the pressure produced by anticipation and that produced by 
the actual event; that the one should be but a shadow of the other. 
Is it so here ? Is the Gethsemane sorrow a mere shadow of the sor- 
row of the cross ? All that is told us of it testifies that under it, what- 
ever it was, the whole power of endurance that was in our Lord's 
humanity was tried and tested to the very last degree. It was a 
purely mental anguish, yet such a strain did it exert upon the body 
that it forced the life-current of the blood out of its accustomed chan- 
nels, and sent it forth to mingle with the drops of sweat that fell to 
the ground. It was an agony so intense that three times, with the 
utmost vehemence of desire, the request went up to heaven, "Father, 
if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." We can readily under- 
stand that from a quarter of which we shall presently have to speak, 
our Saviour's spirit might and did lie open to an anguish of such a 
peculiar nature and intensity that it is saying nothing more of him 
than that he was a man, to say that such strong crying for relief 
issued from his lips ; the vehemence of the desire for this relief offer- 
ing a gauge and measure of the pressure that produced it. But we 
cannot understand, if it were not the actual endurance itself, but only 
the foresight of it that was operating on him, how he who had all 
along been looking forward to the decease he was to accomplish at 
Jerusalem, who was so straitened till it was accomplished, who knew 
so well that it was for that very end he came into the world — should 
at this one time be so moved by the mere prospect of the cup being 
put into his hand, that he should so vehemently recoil from it, and so 
ardently desire that it might pass from him. 

We feel ourselves shut up to the conclusion that the agony of the 
garden was inward, unique, mysterious, impossible to fathom; the 
same in source, the same in ingredients, the same in design, the same 
in effect with our Lord's spiritual sufferings on the cross; an integral 



GETHSEMANE. 637 

and constituent part of the endurance to which, as our spiritual head 
and representative, he submitted, and which sprang from our iniqui- 
ties being laid upon him, in a way and manner that is not open to 
us to comprehend. " He bare our sins in his own body on the tree," 
offering there, not merely or mainly his body to the Eoman execu- 
tioner, but his soul in sacrifice to God. Consummated upon the 
cross, this soul-offering was made also in the garden. Jesus spake 
of an hour and a cup which became so identified in the minds of the 
evangelists, that they are used interchangeably in the narrative of 
the passion. The hour and the cup were one, embracing the entire 
suffering unto death. The hour was on him, and he passed through 
it ; the cup was in his hand, he put it to his lips and drank it equally 
in the garden and on the cross. In passing through that hour, in 
drinking that bitter cup, he made the great atonement for our trans- 
gressions. Some great obstacle there must have been in the way of 
our restoration to the Divine favor. Whatever it was, by the obedi- 
ence unto death of God's dear Son it has been wholly removed. 
"Father," he said, "if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." If 
ever from this earth a cry for relief from suffering went up to God to 
which his ear was open, surely it was this ; whom should the Father 
shield from sorrow if not his own dear Son ? Yet the cup did not 
pass away. The prayer was answered in the strength to endure 
being given, but not in the endurance being removed. To that en- 
durance we are to look as furnishing the ground of our forgiveness 
and acceptance. It has taken every obstruction which our guilt, the 
holiness and justice of the Divine character, the integrity and majesty 
of the Divine law, the stability and prosperity of God's great spiritual 
empire, interposed between us and the immediate and entire blotting 
out of all our iniquities. 

Spread over the whole of our Lord's suffering life, it was con- 
densed in the agony of the garden and the anguish of the cross. 
But why broken into these two great sections, of which we can 
scarcely tell which was the larger, or in which the suffering was the 
more intense? Why but that in the sight of such a sorrow descend- 
ing upon the Saviour's spirit, in the absence of all inflictions from 
without — in the quiet of the garden, in the loneliness of the midnight 
hour — before a hand had been laid on him, before thorn had touched 
his brow, or scourge his back, or nail his hands and feet, we might 
learn to separate in our thoughts the mental and spiritual from the 
bodily sufferings of Christ ; to recognize the truth of the saying, thai 
the sufferings of his soul formed the soul of his sufferings. 

But while the breaking of the great endurance into these two por- 



63S THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

tions — the one borne in the garden, and the other upon the cross — 
carries with it this instructive lesson, is nothing to be learned from 
the subdivision of the former into those three parts which were sep- 
arated so distinctly from one another? Does this subdivision not 
carry with it an indication of the perfect voluntariness on Christ's 
part of the sufferings of Gethsemane ? To give them their vicarious 
and atoning virtue, it was necessary that Christ's sufferings should 
throughout possess this character. Many things about the time and 
manner and circumstances of his death were obviously so ordered as 
to make it evident that he laid down his life of himself, that no man 
took it from him. Much also about the agony of the garden evinces 
that it was voluntarily undergone, and might easily, had Christ so 
willed, have been avoided. Do not those three breaks and pauses — • 
his taking up and laying down the cup, his coming to and going from 
his disciples, correspond best with the idea of the agony being one 
not laid upon him from without or endured by compulsion, but 
one which he could and did take on or lay off, into which he en- 
tered by an act and effort of thought and will ; by the vivid reali- 
zing of the spiritual relationship in which he stood to the great world 
of transgressors ; his voluntary susception of their sins ? 

Apart from any such view of it, let us look at the manner of his 
dealing with the disciples in the course of his agony. Why did 
Jesus, in planting the three at the entrance of the garden, say to 
them, "Tarry ye here and watch with me"? It may have been, to 
assign to them the post oi watchful sentinels, the duty of guarding 
him against surprise, of giving him timely notice of approaching 
danger. He had already distinctly warned them of some impending 
peril, of a storm that was about to burst on him, of such force and 
pressure that it would drive every one of them from his side. He 
had told them that one of themselves was that night to betray him. 
Although at the time none but John knew about the traitor, the 
abrupt departure of Judas must have excited their attention, and 
John had time and opportunity on their way out to the garden to tell 
them on what errand he had gone. Jesus knew when he dismissed 
him that prompt action was needed ; and what he did, Judas must 
have done quickly. He had to go to some of the men with whom he 
had made his compact, and tell them that he was ready instantly to 
fulfil it. He knew where Jesus would go. They might seize him 
there at dead of night, without danger of popular tumult. They had 
not intended to arrest him during the feast, but the opportunity now 
offered is too tempting for them to resist. He may be in their hands 
betore day dawn. His trial and condemnation can quickly be de- 



^ 



GETHSEMANE. 639 

spatclied. Let instant execution follow, and before the people gather 
for the morning sacrifice the hated Galilean may be removed. They 
at once agree with the proposal of the traitor, and as the small 
company in the upper chamber is breaking up, in another part of 
the city a larger one is assembling to move under the leadership of 
the betrayer. 

Nothing of this was known to the disciples, yet something might 
have been suspected. When Jesus placed them at their posts, and 
bade them watch with him, might they not naturally enough have 
regarded this as a summons to them to guard his hours of prayer 
and rest from the approach of the enemy ? Nor does the fact that it 
was the fixed and predetermined purpose of Christ to wait for and 
voluntarily surrender himself to the high priest's band, militate 
against the idea that this duty was laid on them. And had they 
proved true to such a charge — scattered as they were like outlying 
pickets, first the three, and then farther off the eight — had they kept 
a strict lookout upon the path that led out from the city, each eye 
searching the shady places, each ear open to catch the sound of ap- 
proaching footsteps, long ere it reached the spot the betrayer's com- 
pany might have been detected, the warning given, and a timely flight 
effected. But the sentinels slept at their posts, till their Master came 
and roused them with the words, " Rise, let us be going : behold, he 
that betray eth me is at hand." 

Christ's call to watchfulness and prayer was not so much for his 
sake as for theirs. It was that they might not enter into temptation 
so as to be overcome by it. Thick-coming and heavy woes were im- 
pending over himself — the arrest, the trial, the condemnation, the 
crucifixion. He would prepare for all by prayer. When Judas 
comes he will find his Master just risen from his knees, the fitter 
thereby to pass in serene composure through all that lay before him. 
And he knows that trials await his disciples as well as himself : they 
will have to pass through the shame and the reproach of being recog- 
nised as his followers ; they will have tests applied to their fidelity 
needing more strength than they now possess. He bids them 
watch and pray that the needed strength may be imparted. They 
neglect the counsel, they waste the precious interval. The be- 
trayer is upon them and their Master ; upon him fresh from prayer, 
upon them all unprepared, roused from their heavy sleep. 

In our lesser sorrows we throw ourselves upon the sympathy of 
others ; in our greater we seek solitude and wrap ourselves in silence. 
The solitude breeds selfishness. In bearing our heavy burdens we 
are apt to become self-engrossed and careless about others. How 



MO THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

did the Saviour act in the hour of his so bitter grief? The strong 
instinct of humanity was upon him, and he would be alone, yet not 
alone. Had absolute solitude been sought for, he would have planted 
the whole eleven at the entrance into Gethsemane, and himself gone 
so far into the interior that no human eye had been on him, no 
earthly witness near. In taking Peter, and James, and John so far 
along with him, and placing them where they may have seen and 
heard, does not a craving for human sympathy reveal itself? He will 
not have them close beside him when the mysterious agony is expe- 
rienced. Into it, from its nature as well as from its depth, he knows 
they cannot enter. But he would have them near, looking on at a 
distance, following him with such broken sympathy as they can give. 
It will be a solace and a support to him ; and had they watched and 
given him the sympathy he craved, no angel from heaven might have 
been needed ; theirs might have been the honor and the happiness 
of strengthening him in the hour of weakness. But whatever solace 
or support they might have given was withheld. They sleep on all 
the time, roused but for a moment to relapse into repose. And when 
he comes to them at last, is there not something like mournful irony 
and reproach in his words, " Sleep on now, and take your rest" ? ' The 
time for watching, praying, sympathizing is past ; no longer can your 
sleeping do any harm, your watching do any good. The opportunity 
is for ever gone, the good is irrevocably lost, the evil irreparably done.' 

It does not so much surprise us that at the first Peter, and James, 
and John should have fallen asleep. It had been a long, exciting 
evening, and by the strange sorrow that had filled their breasts they 
were weakened for watchfulness. But that after the first visit and 
the pointed rebuke, Christ should come a second and a third time 
and find them sleeping still, it needed his own Divine compassion to 
forgive and overlook. His comings and goings, his mingling of these 
repeated visits to the disciples with the great atoning grief, how high 
in our esteem should this raise our Lord and Saviour : how near to 
our hearts should it bring him ! 

And ere we leave Gethsemane, let a parting thought be bestowed 
on the great example Christ has left us of the spirit in which all 
heavy trials and sorrows should be met and borne. A stone-cast 
measured the distance in the garden which separated him from the 
nearest of his followers ; but who shall measure for us that distance 
in the spiritual world which then separated the Man of Sorrows from 
every other sufferer of our race ? His outward separation and soli- 
tude, how imperfect an emblem of the inner solitude of his soul ! 
From the depths of that lonely agony do we not hear a voice saying 



GETHSEMANE. 641 

to us, ''Behold ! and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow"? 
But though so far removed from us, there is a sense in which we 
must have fellowship with this suffering of Christ, must drink of the 
same cup, and be baptized with the same baptism. With us also 
there come times when all the strength we have is strained to the 
uttermost and is ready to give way. There are Gethsemanes in the 
followers' as in the Master's life. When they come, let us look at 
and try to copy his example. Being in agony, he prayed simply, 
earnestly, repeatedly, using the same words again and again. Is 
any cup of more than usual bitterness put into our hands, let us too 
pray in the same spirit and in the same manner. He mingled care 
and thought for others with his own intensest sorrow. In his weak- 
ness he accepted an angel's help. Let not the heaviest grief that 
ever comes upon us shut our heart to gentle pity. And whoever 
they be that come to sympathize with and to help us, let us count 
thein as angels sent from heaven, and give them an angel's welcome. 
" Let this cup pass from me ; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou 
wjlt." It was not sinful in him to desire relief from poignant grief, 
nor is it so in us. But with us as with him, let the desire for relief 
mingle with and be lost in the spirit of an entire submission to the 
will of our Father in heaven. 



^is o* utnti 



41 



642 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 

With Gethsemane is associated the more unseen and incompre- 
hensible sufferings of our Lord. In Part V the Studies pass over into 
the more visible and outward tribulations and pangs of Christ as the 
Sin-bearer which clothe his death with eternal significance and call 
forth the homage and love of the race. 

The present lesson conducts the student through the opening scenes 
of this great tragedy, and embraces the apprehension of Jesus in the 
garden, his preliminary examination before Annas, and his trial before 
the Sanhedrim. 

The one fact which stands out with peculiar clearness is that 
Christ laid down his life voluntarily in fulfillment of his redemptive 
purpose toward the world. Even in the garden just before his arrest 
there appears to stream forth from him a divine force that causes his 
assailants to fall to the ground. Our Lord voluntarily inhibits the 
operation of this force and suffers himself to be taken and brought 
before the Jewish authorities. It is also plain that Jesus when he 
stands before the Sanhedrim, with splendid and fearless martyr spirit, 
opens the way to his condemnation by this body of bitter foes in his 
answer to the question of Caiaphas, who adjures him to state whether 
he is the Son of God. Jesus might have declined to reply, but he 
answers at once, " I am." 



PART V. PASSION WEEK TO THE BURIAL. 

Study 20. Betrayal and Trial before the Sanhedrim. 

(1) The betrayal of Christ . 643-647 

a. Tremendous line of events filling the evening and night of Thursday.. . 643 

b. Christ's action challenging the band which comes to arrest him, led 

by Judas 644 

c. Through some influence they go backward and fall to the ground 645 

d. Judas directs them to take and hold the one whom he points out by 

a kiss 645-647 

e. Jesus' voluntary surrender and kind bearing toward Judas 645-647 

(2) Judas, the betrayer 647-651 

a. Blinding power of a fixed idea 647, 648 

b. Explanation of Judas' character and career 648-651 

(3) Christ's arrest 651-653 

(4) Denials, repentance, and restoration of Peter 653-662 

(5) Christ's examination before Annas 663-666 

(6) Trial before the Sanhedrim 666-672 

a. Caiaphas, presiding, directs the trial 666-671 

b. Under oath Christ asserts his divine Sonship 667-672 

c. He is condemned as a blasphemer 667-672 



THE 



LAST DAY OF OUR LORD'S PASSION 



I. 

The Betrayal and the Betrayer.* 

"The night on which he was betrayed" — that long, sleepless, 
checkered, troubled night — the last night of our Lord's suffering 
life — that one and only night in which we can follow him throughout, 
and trace his footsteps from hour to hour — through what strange 
vicissitudes of scene and incident, of thought and feeling, did our 
Saviour on that night pass! The meeting in the upper chamber, the 
washing of the disciples' feet, the keeping of the Hebrew passover ; 
the cloud that gathered round his brow, the sad warnings to Peter, 
and the terrible ones to Judas ; the institution of his own Supper, the 
tender consolatory discourse, the sublime intercessory prayer; the 
garden ; its brief and broken prayers, its deep and awful agony ; the 
approach of the high priest's band, the arrest, the desertion by all, 
the denials by one; the private examination before Annas, the public 
arraignment before the Sanhedrim; the silence as to all minor 
charges, the great confession, the final and formal condemnation to 
death; all these between the time that the sun of that Thursday 
evening set, and the sun of Friday morning rose upon Jerusalem. 
"We are all, perhaps, more familiar with the incidents of the first half 
of that night, than with those of the second. Of its manifold sor- 
rows, the agony in the garden formed the fitting climax. Both out- 
wardly and inwardly, it was to the great Sufferer its hour of darkest, 
deepest midnight. Let us join him now as he rises from his last 
struggle in Gethsemane, and follow till we see him laid in Joseph's 
sepulchre. 

The sore amazement is past. Some voice has said to the troubled 

* Matt. 26 : 47-5G ; Mark 14 . 43-50 - Luke 22 . 47 53 ; John 18 : 2-11. 



644 THE LIFE OF OHKIST. 

waters of his spirit, Peace, be still! Instead of the stir and tumult 
of the soul, there is a calm and dignified composure, which never 
once forsakes him, till the same strange internal agony once more 
comes upon him on the cross. "Rise," says Jesus, as for the third and 
last time he bends over the slumbering disciples in the gaiden, "Rise, 
let us be going. Lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand!" Wakeful 
as he has been while the others were sleeping, has he heard the noise 
of approaching footsteps? has he seen the shadows of advancing 
forms, the flickering light of torch and lantern glimmering through 
the olive leaves? It was not necessary that eye or ear should give 
him notice of the approach. He knew all that the betrayer medita- 
ted when, a few hours before, he had said to him, " That thou doest, 
do quickly." He had seen and known, as though he had been pres- 
ent, the immediate resort of Judas to those with whom he had so 
recently made his unhallowed bargain, telling them that the hour 
had come for carrying the projected arrangement into execution, and 
that he was quite sure that Jesus, as his custom all that week had 
been, would go out to Gethsemane so soon as the meeting in the 
upper chamber had broken up, and that there they could easily and 
surely, without any fear of popular disturbance, lay hold of him. 
The proposal was hailed and adopted with eager haste, for there was 
no time to be lost — they had but a single day for action left. The 
band for seizing him was instantly assembled — " a great multitude," 
quite needlessly numerous, even though resistance had been con- 
templated by the eleven ; a band curiously composed — some Roman 
soldiers in it from the garrison of Fort Antonia, excited on being 
summoned to take part in a midnight enterprise of some difficulty 
and danger ; the captain of the temple guard, accompanied by some 
subordinates, private servants of Annas and Caiaphas the high 
priests, with some members even of the Sanhedrim among them ; 
(Luke 22 : 52 ;) a band curiously accoutred — with staves as well as 
swords, with lanterns and torches, that, clear though the night was — 
the moon being at the full,* they might hunt their victim out through 
all the shady retreats of the olive gardens, and prevent the possibility 
of escape. Stealthily they cross the Kedron, with Judas at their 
head, and come to the very place where all this while Jesus has been 
enduring his great agony. Yes ; this is the place where Judas tells 
them they will be so sure to find him. Now, then, is the time for the 
lanterns and the torches. They are saved the search. Stepping out 
suddenly into the clear moonlight, Jesus himself stands before them, 
* We know it was so from the day ox f he month on which the passover was 
celebrated. 



THE BETRAYAL AND THE BETRAYER. 645 

and calmly says, "Whom seek ye?" There are many in that band 
who know him well enough, but there is not one of them who has 
courage to answer — " Thee." A creeping awe is already on their 
spirits. They leave it to others, to those who know him but by 
name, to say, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus says to them, " I am he ;" and 
as soon as he has said it, they go backward, and fall every one to the 
ground. Has some strange sight met their eye ? has Jesus been mo- 
mentarily transfigured as on the Mount? have some stray beams from 
the concealed glory burst forth upon them ? Or is it some inward ter- 
ror shot by a hand invisible through their hearts ? Whatever the spell 
be that has stripped them of all strength, and driven them backwards 
to the ground, it lasts but for a brief season. He who suddenly laid 
it on as quickly lifts it off. But, for that short time, what a picture 
does the scene present ! Jesus standing in the quiet moonlight, 
calmly waiting till the prostrate men shall rise again ; or turning, 
perhaps, a pensive look upon his disciples cowering under the shade 
of the olive-trees, and gazing with wonder at the sight of that whole 
band lying flat upon the ground. For a moment or two, how still it 
is! you could have heard the falling of an olive-leaf. But now the 
spell is over, and they rise. The Boman soldier starts to his feet 
again, as more than half ashamed, not knowing what should have 
so frightened him. The Jewish officer gathers up his scattered 
strength, wondering that it had not gone for ever. Again the quiet 
question comes from the lips of Jesus, " Whom seek ye ?" They say 
to him, "Jesus of Nazareth." Jesus answers, "I have told you that 
I am he. If therefore ye seek me, let these go their way : that the 
saying might be fulfilled which he spake, Of them which thou hast 
given me have I lost none." 

Perfectly spontaneous, then, on the part of our Divine Bedeemer, 
was the delivering of himself up into the hands of his enemies. He 
who by a word and look sent that rough hireling band reeling back- 
wards to the ground, how easily could he have kept it there; or how 
easily, though they had been standing all around him, could he have 
passed out through the midst of them, every eye so blinded that it 
could not see him, every arm so paralyzed that it could not touch 
him ? Judas knew how in such a manner he had previously escaped. 
He must have had a strong impression that it would not be so easy 
a thing to accomplish the arrest, when he told the men, " Whomso- 
ever I shall kiss, that same is he ; take him, and hold him fast." 
Take him ; hold him ! it will only be if he please to be taken and to 
be held that they will have any power to do it. This perfect freedom 
from all outward compulsion, this entirely voluntary surrender of 



646 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

himself to suffering and death, enter as necessary elements into the 
great atonement. And is not its essential element — its being made 
for others — shadowed forth in this outward incident of the Redeem- 
er's life, 'Take me,' he said, 'but let these go their way.' It was 
to throw a protecting shield over this little flock, that he put forth 
his great power over that mixed multitude before him, and made 
them feel how wholly they were within his grasp. It was to acquire 
for a time such a mastery over them that they should consent to let 
his disciples go. It was no part of their purpose beforehand to 
do thus. They proved this, when, the temporary impression over, 
they seized the young man by the way, whom curiosity had drawn 
out of the city, whom they took to be one of his disciples, and who 
with difficulty escaped out of their hands. 

' Take me, but let these go their way.' John saw, in the freedom 
and safety of the disciples thus secured, a fulfilment of the Lord's 
own saying in the prayer of the supper-chamber, "Them that thou 
gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost." We cannot im- 
agine that the beloved disciple saw nothing beyond protection from 
common earthly danger in the expression which he quotes; but that 
lie saw, in the very manner in which that kind of protection had 
been extended, a type or emblem of the higher and spiritual deliver- 
ance that Christ has accomplished for his people by his deliverance 
unto death. Freedom for us, by his suffering himself to be bound ; 
safety for us, by the sacrifice of himself ; life for us, by the death which 
he endured : have we not much of the very soul and spirit of the atone- 
ment in those few words, ' Take me, but let these go their way'? It 
is the spiritual David, the great and good Shepherd, saying, " Let thy 
hand be laid upon me ; but as for these sheep, not, O Lord my God, 
on them." 

Judas stood with those to whom Jesus said, " Whom seek ye ?" 
Along with them he reeled back and fell to the ground. Along with 
them he speedily regained his standing posture, and was a listener 
as the Lord said, " I have told you that I am he ;" inviting them to do 
with him as they wished. There is a pause, a hesitation; for who 
will be the first to lay hand upon him ? Judas will relieve them of 
any lingering fear. He will show them how safe it is to approach 
this Jesus. Though the stepping forth of Christ, and the questions 
and answers which followed, have done away with all need of the 
preconcerted signal, he will yet go through all that he had engaged 
to do ; or, perhaps, it is almost a mechanical impulse upon which he 
acts, for he had fixed on the thing that he was to do toward accom- 
plishing the arrest; he had conned his part well beforehand, and 



THE BETRAYAL AND THE BETRAYER. 647 

braced himself up to go through with it. Hence, when the time for 
action comes, he stops not to reflect, but lets the momentum of his 
predetermined purpose carry him along. He salutes Jesus with a 
kiss! If ever a righteous indignation might legitimately be felt, 
surely it was here. And if that burning sense of wrong had gone no 
farther in its expression than simply the refusal of such a salutation, 
would not Christ have acted with unimpeachable propriety? But it 
is far above this level that Jesus will now rise. He will give an ex- 
ample of gentleness, of forbearance, of long-suffering kindness with- 
out a parallel. Jesus accepts the betrayer's salutation. He does 
more. He says a word or two to this deluded man : " Friend, where- 
fore art thou come?" 'Is it possible that thou canst imagine, after 
all that passed between us at the supper-table, that I am ignorant ol 
thy purpose in this visit? I know that purpose well; thou knowest 
that I do ; if not, I will make a last attempt to make thee know and 
feel it now. Thought of, cared for, warned in so many ways, art thou 
really come to betray such a Master as I have ever been to thee ? 
But though thou hast made up thy mind to such a deed, how is it 
that thou choosest such a cloak as this beneath which to conceal thy 
purpose ? The deed is bad enough itself without crowning it with 
the lie of the hypocrite' — "Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man 
with a kiss!" — the last complaint of wounded love, the last of the 
many and most touching appeals made to the conscience and heart 
of the betrayer; rebuke and remonstrance in the words, but surely 
their tone is one more of pity than of anger ; surely the wish of the 
speaker was to arrest the traitor, if it were not yet too late. Had 
Judas yielded even at that last moment ; with a broken and a contrite 
heart had he thrown himself at his Master's feet, to bathe with tears 
the feet of him whose cheek he had just polluted with his unhallow- 
ed kiss ; looking up through those tears of penitence, had he sought 
mercy of the Lord, how freely would that mercy have been extended 
to him ! who can doubt that he would have been at once forgiven ? 
But he did not, he would not yield ; and so on he went, till there was 
nothing left to him but the horror of that remorse which dug for him 
the grave of the suicide. 

We often wonder, as we read his story, how it was ever possible, 
that, in the face of so many, such explicit, solemn, affectionate ap- 
peals, this man should have so obstinately pursued his course. We 
should wonder, perhaps, the less, if we only reflected what a blind- 
ing, hardening power any one fixed idea, any one settled purpose, 
any one dominant passion, in the full flush and fervor of its ascend- 
ency, exerts upon the human spirit ; how it blinds to consequence* 



648 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

that are then staring us in the very face ; how it deadens to remon- 
strances to which, in other circumstances, we should at once have 
yielded ; how it carries us over obstacles that at other times would 
at once have stopped us; nay, more, and what perhaps is the most 
striking feature of the whole, how the very interferences, for which 
otherwise we should have been grateful, are resented ; how the very 
appeals intended and fitted to arrest, become as so many goads dri- 
ving us on the more determinedly upon our path. So it was with 
Judas. And let us not think that we have in him a monstrous speci- 
men of almost superhuman wickedness. We should be nearer the 
truth, I suspect, if we took him as an average specimen of what the 
passion of avarice, or any like passion, when once it has got the mas- 
tery, may lead any man to be and do. For we have no reason to 
believe of Judas, that from the first he was an utter reprobate. Our 
Lord we scarcely can believe would have admitted such a man to the 
number of the twelve. Can it be believed of him that when he first 
joined himself to Jesus, it was to make gain of that connection? 
There was but little prospect of worldly gain in following the Naza- 
rene. Nor can we fairly attribute that obstinacy which Judas showed 
in the last great crisis of his life, to utter deadness of conscience, 
utter hardness of heart. The man who no sooner heard the death- 
sentence given against his Master, than — without even waiting to see 
if it would be executed — he rushed before the men by whom that 
sentence had been pronounced — the very men with whom he had 
made his unholy covenant, from whom he had got but an hour or 
two before the price of blood — exclaiming in the bitterness of his 
heart, " I have sinned, in that I have betrayed innocent blood;"— the 
man who took those thirty pieces of silver, which his itching palm 
had so longed to clutch, but which now were burning like scorching 
lead the hand that grasped them, and flung them ringing on the temple 
floor, and hurried to a lonely field without the city walls and hanged 
himself, dying in all likelihood before his Master — let us not think of 
him that he was utterly heartless — that he had a conscience seared 
as with a hot iron. 

What, then, is the true explanation of his character and career? 
Let us assume that, when he first united himself to Christ, it wag 
not of deliberate design to turn that connection into a source of profit. 
He found, however, as time ran on, that to some small extent it could 
be so employed. The little company that he had joined had chosen 
him to be their treasurer, to hold and to dispense the slender funds 
which they possessed. Those who are fond of money, as he was, are 
generally careful in the keeping, thrifty in their use of it. Judas had 



THE BETRAYAL AND THE BETRAYER. 649 

those faculties in perfection, and they won for him that office of trust, 
to him so terribly dangerous. The temptation was greater than he 
could resist. He became a pilferer from that small bag. Little as 
it had to feed upon, his passion grew. It grew, for he had no higher 
principle, no better feeling, to subdue it. It grew, till he began to 
picture to himself what untold wealth was in store for him when his 
Master should throw off that reserve and disguise which he had so 
long and so studiously preserved, and take to himself his power, and 
set up his kingdom — a kingdom which he, in common with all the 
apostles, believed was to be a visible and temporal one. It grew, 
till delay became intolerable. At the supper in Bethany, it vexed 
him to see that box of ointment of spikenard, which might have been 
sold for three hundred pence, wasted on what seemed to him an idle 
piece of premature and romantic homage. It vexed him still more 
to hear his Master rebuke the irritation he had displayed, and speak 
now once again, as he had been doing so often lately, of his death 
and burial, as if the splendid vision of his kingdom were never to be 
realized. Could nothing be done to force his Master on to exercise 
his kingly power ? These scribes and Pharisees, who hated him so 
bitterly, desired nothing so much as to get him into their hands. If 
once they did so, would he not, in self-defence, be obliged to put 
forth that power which Judas knew that he possessed? And were 
he to do so, things could not remain any longer as they were. The 
passover — this great gathering of the people — would soon go past, 
and he, Judas, and the rest, have to resume their weary journeyings 
on foot throughout Judea. Thus and then it was, that, in all likeli- 
hood, the thought flashed into the mind of the betrayer to go and 
ask the chief priests what they would give him if he delivered Jesus 
into their hands. They offered him thirty pieces of silver, a very 
paltry bribe — the price in the old Hebrew code of a slave that was 
gored by an ox — less than X5 of our money ; a bribe insufficient of 
itself to have tempted even a grossly avaricious man, in the position 
in which Judas was, to betray his Master, knowing or believing that 
it was unto death. Why, in a year or two Judas might have realized 
as much as that by petty pilferings from the apostolic bag. But this 
scheme of his would bring his Master to the test. It would expedite 
what, to his covetous, ambitious heart, had seemed to be that slow 
and meaningless course to a throne and kingdom which his Master 
had been pursuing. Not suspecting what the immediate and actual 
issue was to be, he made his unholy compact with the high priests. 
He made it on the AVednesday of the passion week. Next evening 
he sat with Jesus in the supper-chamber. He found himself deteot- 



f*50 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

ed ; more than one terrible warning was sounded in his ears. Strange, 
you may think, that instead of stopping him in his course, these 
warnings suggested, perhaps for the first time, the thought that what 
he had engaged to do might be done that very night. The words, 
" What thou doest do quickly," themselves gave eagerness and firm- 
ness to his purpose ; for, after all, though Jesus seemed for the time 
so much displeased — let this scheme b«t prosper — let the kingdom 
be set up, and would he not be sure to forgive the offence that had 
hastened so happy a result ? 

Have we any grounds for interpreting in this way the betrayal? 
Are we right in attributing such motives to Judas? If not, then 
how are we to explain his surprise when he saw his Master, though 
still possessing all his wonderful power, as he showed by the healing 
of the servant's ear, allow himself to be bound and led away like a 
felon ? How are we to explain the consternation of Judas when he 
learned that though Jesus, publicly, before the Sanhedrim, claimed 
to be the Christ, the Son of God, the King of Israel, yet, instead of 
there being any acquiescence in that claim, a universal horror was 
expressed, and on the very ground of his making it, he was doomed 
to the death of a blasphemer ? Then it was, when all turned out so 
differently from what he had anticipated, that the idea of his having 
been the instrument of his Master's death entered like iron into the 
soul of Judas. Then it was, that, overwhelmed with nameless, count- 
less disappointments, vexations, self-reproaches, his very living to see 
his Master die became intolerable to him, and in his despair he flung 
his ill-used life away. 

Accept such solution, and the story of the betrayal of our Lord 
becomes natural and consistent; reject it, and have you not difficul- 
ties in your way not to be got over by any amount of villany that 
you may attribute to the traitor? But does not this solution take 
down the crime of Judas from that pinnacle of almost superhuman 
and unapproachable guilt on which many seem inclined to place it? 
It does ; but it renders it all the more available as a beacon of warn- 
ing to us all. For if we are right in the idea we have formed of the 
character and conduct of Judas, there have been many since his 
time, there may be many still, in the same way, and from the opera- 
tion of the same motives, betrayers of Christ. For everywhere he is 
a Judas, with whom his worldly interests, his worldly ambition, pre- 
vail over his attachment to Christ and to Christ's cause ; who joins 
the Christian society, it may be, not to make gain thereby— but who, 
when the occasion presents itself, scruples not to make what gam he 
can of that connection ; who, beneath the garb of the Christian call 



THE BETRAYAL AND THE BETRAYER. 651 

ing, pursues a dishonest traffic ; who, when the gain and the godli- 
ness come into collision, sacrifices the godliness for the gain. How 
many such Judases the world has seen, how much of that Judas spirit 
there may be in our own hearts, I leave it to your knowledge of 
yourselves and your knowledge of the world to determine. 

Let us now resume our narrative of the arrest. Whatever linger- 
ing reluctance to touch Christ had been felt, that kiss .of Judas 
removed. They laid their hands upon him instantly thereafter, 
grasping him as if he were a vulgar villain of the highway, and 
binding him after the merciless fashion of the Komans. This is what 
one, at least, of his followers cannot bear. Peter springs forth from 
the darkness, draws his sword, and aims at the head of the first person 
he sees ; who, however, bends to the side, and his ear only is lopped 
off. To Christ an unwelcome act of friendship. It ruffles his com- 
posure, it impairs the dignity of his patience. For the first and only 
time a human creature suffers that he may be protected. The injury 
thus done he must instantly repair. They have his hand within their 
hold, when, gently saying to them, "Suffer ye thus far," he releases 
it from their grasp, and, stretching it out, touches the bleeding ear, 
and heals it : the only act of healing wrought on one who neither 
asked it of him, nor had any faith in his healing virtue ? but an act 
which showed how full of almighty power that hand was which yet 
gave itself up to ignominious bonds. Then said Jesus to Peter, 
" Put up again thy sword into his place ; for all they that take the 
sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot now 
pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve 
legions of angels? But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, 
that thus it must be? The cup which my Father hath given me, 
shall I not drink it?" He was drinking then, even at that time, of 
the same cup in regard to which he had been praying in the garden. 
Not only his agonies in Gethsemane and on the cross, but all his 
griefs, internal and external, were ingredients in that cup which, for 
us and for our salvation, he took, and drank to the very dregs — a cup 
put by his Father's hand into his, and by him voluntarily taken, that 
the will of his Father might be done, and that the Scriptures might 
be fulfilled. All this about the cup, and his Father, and the Scrip- 
tures, spoken for the instruction and reproof of Peter, must have 
sounded not a little strange to those chief priests and scribes and 
elders who have come out to be present, at least, if not to take part 
in the apprehension, and who are now standing by his side. But for 
them, too, there must be a word, to show them that he is after all a 
very brother of our race, who feels as any other innocent man would 



652 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

feel if bound thus, and led away as a malefactor. "And Jesus said 
unto the chief priests, and captains of the temple, and the elders, 
which were come to him, Be ye come out, as against a thief, with 
swords and staves? When I was daily with you in the temple, ye 
stretched forth no hands against me : but this is your hour, and the 
power of darkness." A short hour of fancied triumph theirs ; the 
powers of darkness permitted for a short season to prevail ; but 
beyond that hour, light, and a full, glorious, eternal triumph his. 

" Then all the disciples forsook him and fled." That utter deser- 
tion had been one of the incidents of this night of sorrows upon 
which his foreseeing eye had already fixed. "The hour cometh," he 
had said to them in the upper chamber, "yea, is now come, that ye 
shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone : 
and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me." It was only 
during that hurried march from the garden to the judgment-hall that 
Jesus was left literally and absolutely alone: not one friendly eye 
upon him ; not one friendly arm within his reach. But this tempo- 
rary solitude, was it not the type of the inner, deeper solitude, in 
which his whole earthly work was carried on? not the solitude of the 
hermit or the monk — he lived ever with and among his fellow-men ; 
not the solitude of pride, sullenly refusing all sympathy and aid ; not 
the solitude of selfishness, creating around its icy centre a cold, bleak, 
barren wilderness ; not the solitude of sickly sentimentality, for ever 
crying out that it can find no one to understand or appreciate. No ; 
but the solitude of a pure, holy, heavenly spirit, into all whose 
deeper thoughts there was not a single human being near him or 
around him who could enter ; with all whose deeper feelings there 
was not one who could sympathize ; whose truest, deepest motives, 
ends, and objects, in living and dying as he did, not one could com- 
prehend. Spiritually, and all throughout, the loneliest man that ever 
lived was Jesus Christ. But there were hours when that solitude 
deepened upon his soul. So was it in the garden, when, but a stone- 
cast from the nearest to him upon earth, even that broken, imperfect 
sympathy which their looking on him and watching with him in his 
great sorrow might have supplied, was denied to him, and an angel 
had to be sent from heaven to cheer the forsaken one of earth. So 
was it upon the cross, in that dread moment, when he could no 
longer even say, "lam not alone, for my Father is with me ;" when 
there burst from his dying lips that cry — a cry from the darkest, 
deepest, dreariest loneliness into which a pure and holy spirit ever 
passed — "My God, my God! why hast thou forsaken me?" 

Shall we pity him, in that lonely life, these lonely sufferings, thai 



THE DENIALS OF ST. PETER. 653 

lonely death ? Our pity he does not ask. Shall we sympathize with 
him ? Our sympathy he does not need. But let us stand by the 
brink of that deep and awful gulf into which he descended, and 
through which he passed ; and let wonder, awe, gratitude, love, enter 
into and fill all our hearts, as we remember that that descent and that 
passage were made to redeem our souls from death, and to open u] 
a way for us into a sinless and sorrowless heaven. 



ii. 

The Denials. Repentance, and Restoration of 3t 

Peter.* 

When they saw their Master bound and borne away, all the disci- 
ples forsook him and fled. Two of them, however, recovered speedily 
from their panic. Foremost now, and bravest of them all, John first 
regained his self-possession, and returning on his footsteps followed 
the band which conveyed Jesus to the residence of the high priest. 
Coming alone, and so far behind the others, he might have found 
some difficulty in getting admission. The day had not yet dawned ; 
and at so early an hour, and upon so unusual an occasion, the keeper 
of the outer door might have hesitated to admit a stranger ; but John 
had some acquaintance with the domestics of the high priest, and so 
got entrance ; an entrance which Peter might not have ventured to 
ask, or asking, might have failed to get, had not John noticed him 
following in the distance, and, on looking back as he entered, seen 
him standing outside the door. He went, therefore, and spoke to the 
porteress, who at his instance allowed Peter to pass in. The two 
disciples made their way together into the interior quadrangular hall, 
at the upper and raised end of which Jesus was being cross-examin- 
ed by Annas. It was the coldest hour of the night, the hour that 
precedes the dawn, and the servants and officers had kindled a fire 
in the upper end of the hall where they were gathered. Peter did 
not wish to be recognized, and the best way he thought to preserve 
his incognito was to put at once the boldest face he could upon it, 
act as if he had been one of the capturing band and had as good a 
right to be there as others of that mixed company, as little known in 

*Matt. 26:57-59, 69-75; Mark 14:54,55,66-72; Luke 22:54-62; John 
18 : 15-27 ; Mark 16 : 7 ; John 21 : 15-17. 



654 THE LIFE OF CHEIST 

this palace as himself. So stepping boldly forward, and litting dowc 
among the men who were warming themselves around the fire, he 
made himself one of them. The woman who kept the door was 
standing near. The strong light of the kindling fire, falling upon 
that group of faces, her eye fell upon Peter's. That surely, it occur- 
red to her as she looked at it, was the face of the man whom she had 
admitted a few minutes ago, of whose features she had caught a 
glimpse as he passed by. She looks again, and looks more earnestly. 
John 18 : 17 ; Mark 14 : 67 ; Luke 22 : 56. Her first impression is con- 
firmed. It is John's friend; that Galilean's friend; some friend too, 
no doubt of this same Jesus. She says so to a companion by her 
side; but not satisfied with that, wondering, perhaps, at the way in 
which Peter was comporting himself, she waits till she has caught 
his eye, and going up to him she says : " Art not thou also one of this 
man's disciples?" a short, abrupt, peremptory, unexpected challenge. 
It takes Peter entirely by surprise. It throws him wholly off his 
guard. There they are, the eyes of all those men around now turn- 
ed inquiringly upon him ; and there she is — a woman he knows noth- 
ing of — perhaps had scarcely noticed as he passed quickly through 
the porch — a woman who can know nothing about him, yet putting 
that pert question, to which, if he is to keep up the character he has 
assumed, there must be a quick and positive reply. And so the first 
hasty falsehood escapes his lips. The woman, however, wont believe 
him when he says that he does not understand her question. Both to 
himself and to others around her, she re-affirms her first belief. Peter 
has to back his first falsehood by a second and a third : " Woman, 1 
am not one of this man's disciples ; I know him not." Peter's first 
denial of his Master. 

He has now openly committed himself, and he must carry the thing 
through as best he can. He is not at ease, however, in his seat with 
the others around the fire. The glare of that light is too strong. 
Those prying eyes disturb. As soon as conveniently he can, without 
attracting notice, he rises and retires into the shadow of the porch, 
through which in entering he had passed. A cock now crows with- 
out. He hears but heeds it not. Perhaps he might have done so, 
had not another woman — some friend in all likelihood of the por- 
teress with whom she had been conversing — been overheard by him 
affirming most positively, as she pointed him out, "This fellow also 
was with Jesus of Nazareth." And she too comes up to him and 
repeats the saying to himself. The falsehood of the first denial he 
has now to repeat and justify. He does so with an oath, declaring. 
"I do not know the man." Peter's second denial of his Master. 



THE DENIALS OF ST. PETER. 655 

A full hour lias passed. The examination going on at the other 
end of the hall has been engrossing the attention of the onlookers. 
Peter's lost composure and self-confidence have in a measure been 
regained. He is out in the hall again, standing talking with the 
others ; no glare of light upon his face, yet little thinking all the 
while that by his very talking he is supplying another mode of 
recognition. And now for the third time, and from many quarters, 
he is challenged. One said, " Of a truth this fellow was with him." 
A second: "Did T not see thee with him in the garden?" A third: 
"Thy speech bewrayeth thee." Beset and badgered thus, Peter 
begins to curse and to swear, as he affirms, "I know not the man of 
whom ye speak." Peter's third and last denial of his Lord. 

Truly a very sad and humbling exhibition this of human frailty. 
But is it one so rare ? Has it seldom been repeated since ? Have 
we never ourselves been guilty of a like offence against our Saviour ? 
Is there no danger that we may again be guilty of it ? That we may 
be prepared to give a true answer to such questions, let us consider 
wherein the essence of this offence of the apostle consisted, and by 
what steps he was led to its commission. His sin against his Mas- 
ter lay in his being ashamed and afraid to confess his connection 
with him, when taunted with it at a time when apparently confession 
could do Christ no good, and might greatly damage the confessor. 
It was rather shame than fear, let us believe, which led to the 
first denial. It was in moral courage, not physical, that Peter failed. 
By nature he was brave as he was honest. It was no idle boast of 
his, "Lord, I will follow thee to prison and to death." Had there 
been any open danger to be faced, can we doubt that he would 
gallantly have faced it ? Had his Master called him to stand by his 
side in some open conflict with his enemies, would Peter have for- 
saken him ? His was one of but two swords in the garden ; those 
two against all the swords and other weapons of that multitude. 
But even against such odds, Peter, bold as a lion, drew his sword, 
and had the use of it been allowed would have fought it out till he 
had died by his Master's side. But it is altogether a new and 
unexpected state of things, this willing surrender of himself by Jesus 
into the hands of his enemies ; this refusal, almost rebuke, of any 
attempt at rescue or defence. It unsettles, it overturns all Peter's 
former ideas of his Master's power, and of the manner in which that 
power was to be put forth. He can make nothing of it. It looks as 
if all those fond hopes about the coming kingdom were indeed to 
perish. Confused, bewildered, Peter enters the high priest's hall. 
Why should he acknowledge who he is, or wherefore he is there? 



(j56 THE LITE OF CHRIST. 

What harm can there be in his appearing for the time as indifferent 
to Christ's fate as any of these officers and servants among whom 
he sits? That free and easy gait of theirs he assumes; goes in 
with all they say; perhaps tries to join with them in their coarse, 
untimely mirth. First easy yet fatal step, this taking on a character 
ftot his own. He is false to himself before he proves false to his 
Master. The acted lie precedes the spoken one; prepares for it, 
almost necessitates it. It was the rash act of sitting down with those 
men at that fireside, that assumption of the mask, the attempt to 
appear to be what he was not, which set Peter upon the slippery 
edge of that slope, down which to such a depth he afterwards 
descended. Why is it we think so ? Because we have asked our- 
selves the question, Where all this while was his companion John, 
and how was it faring with him ? He too was within the hall, yet 
there was no challenging or badgering of him. The domestics indeed 
knew him, and he may be safe from any interference on their part; 
but there are many here besides who know as little about him as 
they do about Peter. Yet never once is John questioned or dis- 
turbed. And why, but because he had joined none of their com- 
panies, had attempted no disguise; his speech was not heard be- 
wraying him. Had you looked for him, you would have found him 
in some quiet shaded nook of that quadrangle, as near his Master 
as he could get, yet inviting no scrutiny, exposing himself to no 
detection. 

That first false act committed, how natural with Peter was all that 
followed! His position, once taken, had to be supported, had to be 
made stronger and stronger to meet the renewed and more impetu- 
ous assaults. So is it with all courses of iniquity. The fatal step is 
the first one, taken often thoughtlessly, almost unconsciously. But 
our feet get hopelessly entangled ; the weight that drags us along the 
incline gets at every step the heavier, till onward, downward we go 
into depths that at the first we would have shuddered to contemplate. 
In this matter, then, of denying our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, 
let us not be high-minded, but fear; and, taking our special warning 
from that first false step of Peter, should we ever happen to be thrown 
into the society of those who bear no liking to the name or the cause 
of the Redeemer, let us beware lest, hiding in inglorious shame our 
faces from him, we be tempted to say or to do what for us, with our 
knowledge, would be a far worse thing to say or do, than what was 
said and done by Peter, in his ignorance within the high priest's 
hall. 

The oaths with which he sealed his third denial were vet fresh on 



THE DENIALS OF PETER. 657 

Peter's lips,* when a second time the cock crew. And that shrill 
sound was yet ringing in his ears when " the Lord turned and looked 
upon Peter." How singularly well-timed that look ! The Lord is 
waiting till the fit moment come, and instantly seizes it. It might he 
wrong in us to say that but for the look, the second cock-crowing 
would have been as little heeded as the first. It might be wrong in 
us to say that, but for the awakening sound, the look would of itself 
have failed in its effect. But we cannot be wrong in saying that the 
look and the sound each helped the other, and that it was the stri- 
king and designed coincidence of the two — their conjunction at the 
very time when Peter was confirming his third denial by oaths — that 
formed the external agency which our Lord was pleased to contrive 
and employ for stirring the sluggish memory and quickening the dead 
conscience of the apostle. And sluggish memories, dead consciences, 
are they not often thus awakened by striking outward providences 
cooperating with the word and with the Spirit? Have none of us 
been startled thus, as Peter was, amid our denials or betrayals of our 
Master ? Let us bless the instrument, whatever it may be, by which 
so valuable a service is rendered, and see in its employment only 
another proof of the thoughtful, loving care of him who would not 
let us be guilty of such offences without some means being taken to 
alarm and to recover. 

Let us believe, however, that of the two — the sound and the look — 
the chief power and virtue lay in the latter. " The Lord turned." 
He turned from facing those scowling judges ; from listening to all 
the false testimony brought forward against him ; from bearing all 
the insults that masters and servants were heaping upon him; from 
all the excitements of a trial which he knew was to end in his con- 
demnation unto death. Forgetful of self, still thoughtful of his own, 
he " turned and looked upon Peter." Was that a look of anger; of 
umningled, unmitigated rebuke ? Such a look might have sent Peter 
away to hang himself as Judas did; but never to shed such tears of 
penitence as he went out to weep. The naked eye of the very God- 
head might be on us ; but if from that eye there looked out nothing 
but stern, rebuking, relentless wrath, the look of such an eye might 
scorch and wither, but never melt and subdue hearts like ours. 
Doubtless there was reproach in the look which Jesus bent upon 
Peter ; gentle reproach, all the more powerful because of its gentle- 
ness. But that reproach, quickly as it was perceived, and keenly as 
it was felt, formed but a veil to the tender, forgiving, sympathizing 

* •■ Immediately, while he yet spake, the cock crew." Luke 22 : 60. See alao 
Matt. 26: 74. 

Ufe efOhrlrt. 42 



658 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

love which the Master felt for the erring disciple. Volumes of pity 
and compassion lay enfolded in that look. It told the apostle how 
well He, of whom he had just been saying that he knew him not, 
knew 1dm ; how thoroughly he knew him when he forewarned him of 
his fall. But it told Peter at the same time, that it was no thought 
or feeling of the injury or wrong that had been done personally to 
himself, which made Jesus fix such an earnest gaze upon him. Not 
so much of himself as of Peter was he thinking : not for himself, but 
for Peter was he caring. It was the thought of that wrong which 
Peter had been doing to himself, which winged the look, and sent it 
on its hallowed errand into Peter's heart. He felt, as it fell upon 
him, that it was the look of one, not angrily complaining of injury, 
not indignantly demanding redress, but only desiring that Peter 
might feel how unkindly, ungratefully, ungenerously he had acted 
towards such a Master; of one who wished him above all things to 
be assured that if he but saw and felt his error, there were readiness 
and room enough in his heart to receive him back at once and fully 
into favor — to forgive all, forget all, be all to him he had ever been. 
Another kind of look the apostle might have encountered unflinch- 
ingly, but not a look like that. Instantly there flashed upon his 
memory those words of prophetic warning, spoken a few hours be- 
fore in the guest-chamber. Thrice had Jesus forewarned him, that 
before the cock crew twice, he should thrice deny him. Had he never 
thought of these words till now ? In the distraction of the moment 
he might have allowed the first cock-crowing to pass unheeded, but 
how, during the whole hour (Luke 22 : 59) which followed his first 
two denials, should that striking warning never once have occurred 
to his memory ? Very strange it seems to lis ; but very strange are 
the moods and passions of the mind — what is remembered by it, and 
what forgotten, when some new strong tide of thought and feeling 
rushes in, and fills and agitates the soul. In the strange, unexpect- 
ed, perilous position in which he had so suddenly been placed, Peter 
had forgotten all — the meeting of the upper chamber, the triple warn- 
ing, the "Verily, verily, I say unto you," which had then sounded in 
his ears. But now, as if the awakened memory, by the very fulness 
and vividness of their recall, would repair the past forgetfulness, he 
sees all, hears all again. Those words of warning are anew ringing 
in his ears, and as he thinks how fearfully exact the fulfilment of 
those forgotten predictions of his Master has been, a sense of guilt 
and shame oppresses him. He can bear that look no longer; he 
turns and hurries out of the hall, seeking a place to shed his bitter 
tears — tears not like those of Judas, of dismal and hopeless remorse, 



THE KEPENTANCE OF PETER. 659 

but of genuine and unaffected repentance. He goes out alone, but 
whither? It was still dark. The day had not jet dawned. He 
would not surely at such an hour, and in such a state of feeling, go 
back at once into the city, to seek out and join the others who had 
fled. Such deep and bitter grief as his seeks solitude; and where 
could he find a solitude so suitable as that which his Lord and Mas- 
ter had so loved? We picture him as visiting alone the garden of 
Gethseniane, not now to sleep while his Lord is suffering; but to 
seek out the spot which Jesus had hallowed by his agony, to mingle 
his tears with the great drops of blood which had fallen down to the 
ground. 

Where and how he spent the two dismal days which followed we 
do not know. After that look from Him in the judgment-hall, he 
never saw his Lord alive again. But as on the third morning we 
find John and him together, we may believe that it was from the lips 
of the beloved disciple — the only one of all the twelve who was pres- 
ent at the trial before Pilate, and who stood before the cross — that 
Peter heard the narrative of that day's sad doings; how they bound 
and scourged and mocked and spat upon the Lord; how they nailed 
him to the cross, and set him up in agony, to die. And at each part 
of the sad recital, how would that heart, softened by penitence, be 
touched; how would it grieve Peter to remember that he too had 
had a share in laying such heavy burdens on the last hours of his 
Lord's suffering life ! That Master whom he had so dishonorably and 
ungratefully denied, was now sleeping in the grave. Oh, but for one 
short hour with him — a single interview — that he might tell him how 
bitterly he repented what he had done, and get from his Master's liv- 
ing, loving lips the assurance that he had been forgiven ! But that 
never was to be. He should never see him more. Never, grief- 
blinded man ? Thine eye it sees not, thine ear it hears not, neither 
can that sorrow-burdened heart of thine conceive what even now Jesus 
is preparing for thee. The third morning dawns. The Saviour rises 
triumphant from the grave ; in rising, sets the angels as sentries be- 
fore the empty tomb ; gives to them the order that, to the first visit- 
ants of the sepulchre, this message shall be given : " Go, tell the dis- 
ciples and Peter, that he is risen from the dead." This message from 
the angel, Peter had not heard* when he and John ran out together 
to the sepulchre, and found it empty. But he heard it not long after. 
Who may tell what strange thoughts that singling out of Mm — that 
special mention of his name by those angelic watchers of the sepuh 

* Mary Magdalene, on whose report they acted, had seen no angel on hei 
first visit to the sepuicur*. 



660 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

chre — excited in Peter's heart ? How came those angels to know or 
think of him at such a time as this? It could not have been their 
own doing. They must have got that message from the Lord him- 
self — been told by him particularly to name Peter to the women. But 
was it not a thing most wonderful, that in the very act of bursting the 
barriers of the grave, there should be such a remembrance of him on 
the part of that Master whom he had so lately denied ? Was it not 
an omen for good ? Peter had his rising hopes confirmed, his doubts 
and fears all quenched, when, some time in the course of that fore- 
noon, waiting till John and he had parted — waiting till he could meet 
him alone, and speak to him with all the greater freedom and ful- 
ness — Jesus showed himself to Peter. Before he met the others to 
speak peace, he hastened to meet Peter to speak pardon. One of 
the first offices of the risen Saviour was to wipe away the tears of 
the penitent. 

" Go your way," said the angel to the women at the sepulchre, 
" tell his disciples and Peter, that he goeth before you into Galilee ; 
there shall ye see him, as he said unto you." The paschal festival, 
and Christ's own presence, kept the apostles for eight days and more 
in the holy city. But as, after those two interviews in the evenings 
of the first two Lord's days of the Christian church, Jesus did not 
appear to them again, the eleven, presuming that he had gone before 
them to Galilee, also went thither. The return to their old homes 
and haunts, the sight of their nets and fishing-boats, the absence of 
any specific instructions as to the future, suggest to some of them the 
thought of taking up again their earlier occupation. Seven of them 
are walking together one evening by the side of the lake. It looks 
tempting ; the boats and the nets are near, and it is the best hour of 
all the day for fishing. Peter — the very one from whom we should 
have expected a first proposal of this kind to come — says to them, "I 
go a fishing." They all go with him. They toil all the night, but 
catch nothing. As morning breaks, they see a man standing on the 
shore, seen but dimly through the haze, but near enough for his voice 
to be heard across the water. "Children," he says, "have ye any 
meat ?" They tell him they have none. " Cast the net," he replies, 
"on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find." And now they are 
not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes. This could scarcely 
fail to recall to the memory of some at least within the boat, that 
other miraculous draught of fishes, by which, now nearly three years 
before, three out of the twelve apostles were taught to forsake all and 
follow Jesus, that he might make tu^m fishers of men. This repeti- 
tion of the miracle was nothing else than a symbolic renewal of that 



THE RESTORATION OF PETER. 661 

first commission, intended to teach the twelve that their apostolic 
calling still held good. There was one, however, of the seven who 
gathered round Jesus at the morning meal which he spread for them 
on the shore, when their fisher's toil was over, whose position tow- 
ards that commission and apostleship had become peculiar. He had 
been in the habit of taking a very prominent place among the twelve, 
and often acted as their representative and spokesman. But on the 
night of the betrayal he had played a singularly shameful and incon- 
sistent part. They had all, indeed, forsaken their Master; but who 
would have thought that the very one of them who that night had 
been so vehement in his assertions that though all men, all his fel- 
low-disciples, should forsake his Master, he never would, should yet 
so often, and with such superfluous oaths, have denied that he ever 
knew, or had anything to do with Jesus ? True it was that Jesus had 
forgiven Peter. His fellow- disciples, also, had forgiven that over- 
boastful magnifying of himself above the others. There was some- 
thing so frank about him, and so genuine; such outgoings of an hon- 
est, manly, kindly, generous nature, that they could not bear against 
him any grudge. They were all now on their old terms with one 
another. But how will it stand with Peter if that apostolic work has 
to be taken up again ? How will he feel as to resuming his old posi- 
tion among the twelve ? Will he not, in the depth of that humility 
and self-distrust taught him by his great fall, shrink now from pla- 
cing himself even on the same level with the others ? And how will 
his Lord and Master feel and act as to his reinstatement in that office 
from which by his transgression he might be regarded as having 
fallen? To all these questions there were answers given, when Jesus, 
once more singling Peter out, said to him, "Simon, son of Jonas" — 
the very giving him his old and double name sounding as a note of 
preparation for the important question which was to follow, " Simon, 
son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these," ' thy brethren, my other 
disciples, do ?'-• -a gentle yet distinct enough reminder of that former 
saying: "Though all men should be offended, I never will;" a deli- 
cate yet searching probe, pressed kindly but firmly home into the 
depths of Peter's heart; a skilful method of testing and exhibiting 
the truth and depth of Peter's repentance, without subjecting him to 
the painful humiliation of having the terrible denials of his Master 
brought up and dwelt upon, either by Jesus in the way of charge, or 
by himself in the way of confession. The best way of trying any 
man, whether he has really repented of any sinful deed, is to place 
him again in the like circumstances, and see if he will act in the like 
manner. This is the way in which the Lord now tries Peter. Will 



j 



662 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

he again compare himself with the others; will he set himself above 
them ; will he say as much now about his love being greater than 
theirs, as he did then about his courage ; will he repeat that boasting 
which was the precurser of his fall ? How touchingly does his an- 
swer show that he perfectly understood the involved reference to the 
past; that he had thoroughly learned its humbling lessons? No 
longer any comparing himself with or setting himself above others — 
the old Peter-like frankness and fervor in the "Tea, Lord, I love 
thee," but a new humility in it, for he will not say how much ho 
loves, still less will venture to say that he loves more than others : 
and a deeper humility still, for he will not offer his own testimony as 
to the love he feels, he will trust no more his own deceitful heart, 
nor ask his Lord to trust it, but throwing himself upon another 
knowledge of that heart which had proved to be better than his, he 
says, "Yea, Lord, thou knoiuest that I love thee." Our Lord's reply 
is a most emphatic affirmative response to this appeal. It is as if he 
had said at large, 'Yes, Simon Barjona, I do know that thou lovest 
me I know, too, that thou wouldst make no boast of thy love, nor 
in that or anything else set thyself any longer above thy fellows ; and 
now, that these thy brethren may know and see it too, how hearty 
thy penitence has been, how thoroughly it has done its humbling 
work, and how readily I own and acknowledge thee as being all to 
me thou ever wert; therefore now, in presence of these brethren, I 
renew to thee the apostolic commission — publicly reinstate thee in 
the apostolic office — " Feed my sheep." I need not ask thee again 
whether thou lovest me more than others. I will prove thee no more 
by that allusion to the past; but I have once, twice, thrice to put 
that other general question to thee, that as three times I warned 
thee, and three times thou didst deny me, even so I may three times 
restore thee.' Can we wonder that Peter was grieved, when for the 
third time that question, "Lovest thou me ?" was put to him. It was 
not the grief of doubt, as if he suspected that Jesus only half-believed 
his word; but the grief of contrition, a grief which grew into a deeper 
sadness at the distinct allusion which the thrice-repeated question 
evidently bore to his three denials. And yet even in that sadness 
there is comfort; the comfort of feeling that his affectionate Master 
is giving him the opportunity of wiping away his threefold denial by 
threefold confession. And so, with a fuller heart, and in stronger 
words than ever, will he make avowal of his love: "Lord, thou know* 
est all things: thou knowest that I love thee." 



THE SANHEDJLUM. 665 

III. 

The Trial before The Sanhedrim.* 

TnE Jews regarded their day as beginning at one sunset and end- 
ing with the next. This interval was not divided into twenty-four 
parts or hours of equal and invariable length. They took each day 
by itself, from sunrise to sunset, and each night by itself, from sunset 
to sunrise, and divided each into twelve equal parts or hours ; so that 
a Jewish hour, instead of being, as it is with us, a fixed measure of 
time, varied in its length as each successive day and night varied in 
theirs at different seasons of the year. Neither did the Jews begin 
as we do, reckoning the twelve hours into which the day and night 
were respectively divided, from midday and midnight, but from sun- 
set and sunrise ; their sixth hour of the night corresponding thus with 
our twelve o'clock, our midnight ; their sixth hour of the day with our 
twelve o'clock, our midday. There were but two periods of the year, 
those of the autumnal and vernal equinox, when, day and night being 
exactly equal, the length of the hours in both was precisely the same 
with our own. It was at one of these periods, that of the vernal equi- 
nox, that the Jewish passover was celebrated, and it was on the day 
which preceded its celebration that our Lord was crucified. It was 
close upon the hour of sunrise on that day that Jesus was carried to 
the prsetorium, to be examined by the Eoman governor. Assuming 
that he entered Gethsemane about midnight, and remained there 
about an hour, the interval between the Jewish seventh and twelfth 
hour of the night, or between our one and six o'clock of the morning, 
was spent in the trial before Annas and Caiaphas, both reckoned as 
high priests, the one being such de jure, the other de facto. They 
seem to have been living at this time in the same palace into the 
hall of which Jesus was carried immediately after his arrest. It was 
in this hall, and before Annas, that Jesus was subjected to that pre- 
liminary informal examination recorded in the eighteenth chapter of 
the gospel of St. John, ver. 19-24. He was to be formally tried, 
with show at least of law, before the Sanhedrim, the highest of the 
Jewish courts; but this could not be done at once. Some time was 
needed to call the members of that court together, and to consult as 
to the conduct of the trial. Annas was there from the first, awaiting 
the return of the band sent out to arrest the Saviour. His son-in- 
law Caiaphas was in all likelihood by his side, eager both and ready 
* John 18 : 19-24 ; Luke 22 : 66-71 ; Matt, 26 : 59-68 ; Mark 14 . 53-65. 



664 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

to proceed. But they could not act without their colleagues, not 
pronounce any sentence which they might call upon the Koman gov- 
ernor at once to ratify and execute. While the messengers, however, 
are despatched to summon them, and the members of the Sanhedrim 
are gathering, Annas may prepare the way by sounding Christ, in a 
far-off, unofficial, conversational manner, and may perhaps extract 
from his replies some good material upon which the court may after- 
ward proceed. Calling Jesus before him, he puts to him some ques- 
tions about his disciples and his doctrine ; questions fair enough, and 
proper enough as to their outward form, yet captious and inquisito- 
rial, intended to entangle, and pointing not obscurely to the two main 
charges to be afterwards brought against him, of being a disturber of 
the public peace, and a teacher of blasphemous doctrines. 

First, then, about his disciples : Annas would like to know what 
this gathering of men around him meant; this forming them into a 
distinct society. By what bond or pledge to one another were the 
members of this new society united; what secret instructions had 
they got; what hidden objects had they in view? Though Christ 
might not reveal the secrets of this combination, yet, let it but ap- 
pear — as by his very refusal to give the required information it might 
be made to do — that an attempt was here being made to organize a 
confederation all over the country, how easy it would be to awaken 
the jealousy of the Eoman authorities, and get them to believe that 
some insurrectionary plot was being hatched which it was most de- 
sirable at once to crush, by cutting off the ringleader. Such we know 
to have been the impression so diligently sought to be conveyed into 
the mind of Pontius Pilate. And Annas began by trying whether he 
could get Jesus to say anything that should give a color of truth to 
such an imputation. Penetrating at once his design, knowing thor- 
oughly what his real meaning and purposes were, our Lord utterly 
and indignantly denies the charge that was attempted thus to be fas- 
tened on him. Neither as to his disciples, nor as to his doctrine — 
neither as to the instructions given to his followers, nor as to the 
bonds of their union and fellowship with one another, had there been 
anything of the concealed or the sinister ; not one doctrine for the peo- 
ple without, and another for the initiated within ; no meetings under 
cloud of night in hidden places for doubtful or dangerous objects. 
"I spake," said Jesus, "openly to the world; I ever taught in the 
synagogue and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort; and 
in secret" — that is, in the sense in which I know that you mean and 
use the term secret — "have I said nothing; why askest thou me?" 

This question tells the judge how naked and bare that hypoeriti 



THE SANHEDRIM. 665 

cal heart of his lies to the inspection of his prisoner : " Why askest 
thou me ?" ' Put that question, Annas, to thy heart, and let it an- 
swer thee, if it be not so deceitful as to hide its secrets from thine own 
eyes. "Why askest thou me?" Art thou really so ignorant as thou 
pretendest to be ; thou, who hast had thy spies about me for well- 
nigh three years, tracking my footsteps, watching my actions, report- 
ing my words? "Why askest thou me ?" Dost thou really care to 
know, as these questions of thine would seem to indicate? then go, 
"ask them which heard me, what I have said unto them: behold, 
they know what I said.'" A boldness here, a touch of irony, a stroke 
of rebuke, which perhaps our Lord might not have used, had it been 
upon his seat and in his office as president of the Sanhedrim that the 
high priest was speaking to him; had it not been for the mean ad- 
vantage which he was trying to take of him ; had it not been for the 
cloak of hypocrisy which, in trying to take that advantage, he had 
assumed. We shall see presently, at least, that our Lord's tone and 
manner were somewhat different when his more formal trial came on. 
Christ's sharp sententious answer to Annas protected him — and per- 
haps that was one of its chief purposes — from the repetition and pro- 
longation of the annoyance. It seems to have silenced the high priest. 
He had made but little by that way of interrogating his prisoner, and 
he wisely gives it up. Whatever resentment he cherished at being 
checked and spoken to in such a manner, he refrained from any 
expression of it, biding the hour when all his bitter pent-up hatred of 
the Nazarene might find fitter and fuller vent. 

But there was one of his officers who could not so restrain him- 
self, who could not bear to see his master thus, as he thought, insult- 
ed, and who, in the heat of his indignation, struck Christ with the 
palm of his hand — some forward official, who thought in this way to 
earn his master's favor, but who only earned for himself the unenvi- 
able notoriety of having been the first to begin those acts of inhuman 
violence with which the trial and condemnation of Jesus were so 
largely and disgracefully interspersed. Others afterwards came for- 
ward to mock and jostle and blindfold, to smite and to spit upon our 
Lord, to whom he answered nothing; but when that first stroke was 
inflicted, with the question, "Answerest thou the high priest so?" 
Jesus did not receive it in silence. He answered the question by 
another: " If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if well, 
why smitest thou me ?" Best comment this on our Lord's own pre- 
cept : " If thy brother smite thee on the one cheek, turn to him the 
other also;" and a general key to all like Scripture precepts, teach- 
in er ns that the true observance of them lies not in the fulfilment ol 



666 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

them as to the letter, but in the possession and exhibition of the 
spirit which they prescribe. How much easier would it be when 
smitten upon the one cheek, to turn the other for a second stroke, 
than to be altogether like our Lord in temper and spirit under the 
infliction of the stroke ! More difficult, also, than any silence, to 
Imitate that gentle answer. The lips might be sealed, while the heart 
was burning with anger. But it was out of the depths of a perfect 
patience, a gentleness which nothing could irritate, that the saying 
came: "If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if well, 
why smitest thou me?" "Think," says Chrysostom, "on him who 
said these words, on him to whom they were said, and on the reason 
why they were said, and these words will, with divine power, cast 
down all wrath which may rise within thy soul." 

But now at last the whole council has assembled, Caiaphas has 
taken his seat as president, and they go more formally to work. 
Their object is to convict him of some crime which shall warrant 
their pronouncing upon him the severest sentence of the law. That 
the appearance of justice may be preserved,* they must have wit- 
nesses ; these witnesses must testify to some speech or act of Christ 
which would involve him in that doom ; and as to any specific charge, 
two of these witnesses must agree before they can condemn. They 
could have got plenty of witnesses to testify as to Christ's having 
within the last few days openly denounced themselves, the members 
of the Sanhedrim, as fools and blind, hypocrites, a very generation 
of vipers; but to have convicted Christ upon that count or charge 
would have given to their proceedings against him the aspect of per- 
sonal revenge. They could have got plenty of witnesses to testify 
as to Christ's having often broken and spoken slightingly of ordinan- 
ces and traditions of the Pharisees ; but there were Sadducees among 
their own members, and the council might thus have been divided. 
They could have got plenty of witnesses to testify as to Christ's fre- 
quent profanation of the Sabbath; but how should they deal with 
those miracles, in or connected with the performance of which so 
many of these cases of profanation of the Sabbath had occurred ? 
They are in difficulty about their witnesses. They bring forth many, 
but either the charge which it is proposed to establish against Christ 
comes not up to the required degree of criminality, or the clumsy 
witnesses, brought hastily forward, undrilled beforehand, break down 

* It would appear that in holding their council during the night, and in con- 
demning Christ solely upon his own confession, the Jews violated express enact- 
ments of their own code. See "Jesus devant Caiphe et Pilate — Refutation du 
shapitre de M. Salvador, intitule 'Jugement et Condamnation de Jesus.'" pair 
M. Dupin 



THE SANHEDEIM. 667 

hi their testimony. Two, however, clo at last appear, who seem at 
first sight to agree; but when minutely questioned as to the words 
which they allege that more than two years before they had heard 
him utter about the destruction of the temple, they report them dif- 
ferently, so that "neither did their witness agree." The prosecution 
is in danger of breaking down for want of proof. 

All this time the accused has observed a strange — to his judges 
an unaccountable and provoking silence. He hears as though he 
heard not — cared not — were indifferent about the result. It is more 
than the presiding judge can stand. He rises from his seat, and fix- 
ing his eyes on Jesus, says to him, " Answerest thou nothing ?" * Hast 
thou nothing to say? no question to put, no explanation to offer, as 
to what these witnesses testify against thee?' Jesus returns the 
look, but there is no reply ; he stands as silent, as unmoved as ever. 
Baffled, perplexed, irritated, the high priest will try yet another way 
with him. Using the accustomed Jewish formula for administering 
an oath — a formula recited by the judge, and accepted without repe- 
tition by the respondent — " I adjure thee," said the high priest, " by 
the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son 
of God." Appealed to thus solemnly, by the first magistrate of his 
nation, sitting in presidency over the highest of its courts, our Lord 
keeps silence no longer. But it is in words that must have struck 
every auditor with wonder that he replies to the high priest's adjura- 
tion. He sees quite through the purpose of the high priest. He 
knows quite well what will be the immediate issue of his reply. Yet 
he says, '"I am;" I am the Christ, the Son of the Blessed; "and 
ye" — ye who are sitting there now as my judges — "ye shall see the 
Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the 
clouds of heaven." ' It is our Lord's own free and full confession, 
his public and solemn assertion of his claim to the Messiahship, and 
Sonship to God. The time for all concealment or reserve is past. 
Jesus will now openly, not only take to himself his own name, assume 
his office, and assert his Divine prerogatives, but in doing so he will 
let those earthly dignitaries, who have dragged him thus to their tri- 
bunal, before whose judgment-seat he stands, know that the hour is 
coming which shall witness a strange reversal in their relative posi- 
tions — he being seen sitting on the seat of power, and they, with all 
the world beside, seen standing before his bar, as on the cloudt of 
heaven he comes to judge all mankind. 

The effect of this confession, this sublime unfolding of his true 
character, and prophecy of his second coming, was immediate, and 
though extraordinary, not unnatural. The high priest, as soon as he 



668 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

drank in the real meaning of the words which fell on his astonished 
ear, grasped his mantle, and rent it in real or feigned horror, exclaim- 
ing, "He hath spoken blasphemy." Then rose up also the other 
judges who were sitting round him, excited to the highest pitch, each 
more eager than the other to put this question to the accused, "Art 
thou then the Son of God?" to all of whom there is the same answei 
as to Caiaphas, "I am." "What further need then," says the presi- 
dent of the court to his brother judges, "have we of witnesses ? No^w 
ye have heard his blasphemy. What think ye ?" " What need we," 
they say to him, taking up his own words, " any further witnesses ? 
for we ourselves have heard it out of his own mouth." And they 
"answered and said, He is guilty of death." See Deut. 13 : 5; 18 : 20. 
The unanimous judgment of the court is delivered, (Mark 14 : 64,) 
and the sentence of death pronounced. 

Is there not one among all those judges within whose heart there 
rise some strange misgivings as he dooms this man to die ; not one 
whom the calmness, the serenity, the dignified bearing of the Lord, 
as he made the great revelation of himself before them, have impress- 
ed with wonder and with awe ? Perhaps there is ; but the tumult 
of that vehement condemnation carries him away ; or if any inward 
voice be pleading for the accused, he quenches it by saying that, if 
Jesus really submit to such a sentence being executed upon him, he 
cannot be the Messiah, he must be a deceiver; and so he lets the 
matter take its course. 

The pronouncing of the sentence from the bench was the signal 
for a horrible outburst of violence in the hall below. As if all license 
was theirs to do with him as they liked ; as if they knew they could 
not go too far — could do nothing that their masters would not ap- 
prove, perhaps enjoy — the men who held Jesus (Luke 22 : 63) — for it 
would seem they could not trust him, bound though he was, to stand 
free before them — began to mock him, to buffet him, to spit upon 
him, and to cover his eyes with their hands, saying, as they struck at 
him, "Prophesy to us who it is that smiteth thee." "And many 
other things blasphemously spake they against him." How long all 
this went on we know not. They had to wait till the proper hour 
arrived for carrying Jesus before the Koman governor, and it was 
thus that the interval was filled up ; the meek and the patient One, 
who was the object of all this scorn and cruelty, neither answering, 
nor murmuring, nor resisting, nor reproaching. There was but one 
man in that hall to look with loving, pitying eyes on him who was 
being treated thus; and in the words which that spectator penned 
long years thereafter in his distant lonely island, we may see some 



THE SANHEDRIM. 669 

trace of the impression which the sight of the great sufferer made : 
"I, John, who also am your brother and companion in tribulation, 
and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ." 

The malignant antipathy to Christ cherished by the hierarchal 
party at Jerusalem had early ripened into an intention to cut him off 
by death. It was at the beginning of the second year of his minis- 
try that he healed the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda. "The 
man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus which had made 
him whole. And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and seek 
to slay him because he had done these things on the Sabbath-day. 
But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. 
Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only 
had broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, ma- 
king himself equal with God."* So far from repudiating this inter- 
pretation of his words, Jesus accepted and confirmed it ; enlarging 
the scope, without altering the nature of what he had said about the 
Father, claiming not only unity in action, but unity in honor with 
him. John 5 : 33. So vengeful in their hatred did the Jews of Jeru- 
salem become, that Jesus had to seek safety by retiring from Judea. 
In the course of the two years which followed, Jesus paid only two 
visits to the metropolis, and both were marked by outbreaks of the 
same implacable animosity. His appearance in Jerusalem at the 
feast of tabernacles excited such an instant and intense spirit of vin- 
dictiveness, that one of our Lord's first sayings to the Jews in the 
temple was, " Why go ye about to kill me ?" So well known was the 
purpose of the rulers, that it was currently said, "Is not this he whom 
they seek to kill ? But, lo, he speaketh boldly, and they say nothing 
unto him. Do the rulers know indeed that this is the very Christ?" 
John 7 : 25, 26. Hearing that such things were said, the rulers sent 
their officers to seize him, but failed in the attempt to get him into 
their hands. They then confronted him in the temple, and openly 
charged him with bearing a false record about himself. A strange 
dialogue ensued, in the course of which, instead of retracting any- 
thing which he had formerly said, or attempting to explain it away, 
Jesus not only exalted himself above Abraham, in whom they boast- 
ed, but declared, in language which they could only understand as an 

* John 5 : 15-18. When, on a succeeding Sabbath, Christ healed the man 
who had a withered hand, tlie Pharisees "were filled with madness, and straight- 
way took counsel with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him." 
Luke 6 : 11 ; Mark 3 : 6. Christ's movements were, from the beginning and 
throughout, more regulated by the pressure of the persecution to which he was 
exposed, than a cursory reading of the gospel narrative might lead us to imagine, 
See John 2 : 24 ; 4:1-3; Mark 1 : 45 ; Luke 5:17; 11 : 53-56. 



670 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

assumption by him of Divine prerogatives : " Before Abraham "was, 1 
am." So exasperated were they when he said this, that they took up 
stones to cast at him ; and had he not made himself invisible, and so 
passed through the midst of them, they would, in the heat of the 
LDoment, and without troubling themselves about any formal trial, 
have inflicted on him the doom of the blasphemer. Having lingered 
for a few days longer in the neighborhood of Jerusalem, wrought a 
memorable cure on the man born blind, and delivered that memora- 
ble discourse which John has preserved to us in the tenth chapter of 
his gospel, Jesus again retired from the capital. On his return, two 
months afterwards, at the feast of dedication, he was met as he 
walked in the temple in Solomon's Porch, and with some show of 
candor and anxiety, the question was put to . him, " How long dost 
thou make us to doubt? if thou be the Christ, tell us plainly." Jesus 
did not tell them so plainly as they desired about his being the 
Christ, but he told them plainly enough, as he had done before, that 
he was the Son of God. "I," said he, " and my Father are one. Then 
the Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, 
Many good works have I showed you from my Father: for which of 
those works do yo stone me? The Jews answered him, saying, For 
a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy ; and because that 
thou, being a man, makest thyself God." Again our Lord had to 
protect himself from the storm of their wrath by retreating to Peraea. 
The message from the mourning sisters recalled him from this re- 
treat. The raising from the dead of a man so well known as Laza- 
rus, in a village so near to Jerusalem as Bethany, produced such an 
effect that a meeting of the Sanhedrim was summoned to deliberate 
as to what should be done. The design which they had so long 
cherished, they now more deliberately than ever determined to ac- 
complish : " From that day forth they took counsel together to put 
him to death." John 11 : 53. 

Though hurried at last in the time and manner of its execution, 
it was no hasty purpose on the part of the members of the Jewish 
council to put our Lord to death. The proposal of Judas did not 
take them by surprise, the arrest in the garden did not find them 
unprepared. They must often have deliberated how they should 
proceed if they once had him in their hands. And when he was at 
last before them for formal trial, and they were eager to get him 
condemned, they had not for the first time to consider what charges 
they should bring against him, and by what evidence the charges 
might be sustained. Witnesses enough of all kinds were within 
their easy reach, nor had they any scruple as to the means they took 



THE SANHEDRIM. 671 

to get from tliem tlie evidence they wanted. But with all theii 
facilities, and all their bribery, they could not substantiate a single 
charge against Jesus which would justify them in condemning him. 
Why, when they found themselves in such difficulty, did they not 
summon into their presence some of those who had heard Jesua 
commit that kind of blasphemy, upon the ground of which they had 
twice, upon the spur of the moment, attempted to stone him to 
death ? Testimony in abundance to that effect must have been 
lying ready to their hands. It seems clear to us that the first and 
earnest desire of the members of the Sanhedrim was to convict 
Christ of some other breach of their law, sufficient to justify the 
infliction of death; and that it was not till every attempt of this 
kind had failed, that, as a last resort, the high priest put our Lord 
himself upon his oath. In the form of adjuration which he em- 
ployed, two separate questions were put to Christ : the one, Whether 
he claimed to be the Christ; the other, Whether he claimed to be 
the Son of God. These were not identical. The latter title was not 
one which either Scripture or Jewish usage had attached to the 
Messiah. The patent act of blasphemy which our Lord was con- 
sidered as having perpetrated in the presence of the council was not 
his having asserted his Messiahship, but his having appropriated 
the other title to himself. When, after Christ had given his first 
affirmative reply to the complex challenge of Caiaphas, the other 
judges interfered to interrogate the prisoner, they dropped all allu- 
sion to the Messiahship. "Then said they all, Art thou then the 
Son of God ?" and it was upon our Lord's reassertion that he was — 
upon that, and that alone, that he was doomed to death as a blas- 
phemer. For it was perfectly understood between the judges and 
the judged, that, in thus speaking of himself, Jesus claimed a 
peculiar, an intrinsic affinity — oneness in essence, knowledge, power, 
and glory, with the Father. His judges took Jesus to be only man, 
and looking upon him as such, they were so far right in regarding 
him as guilty of blasphemous presumption. In this, then, one of the 
most solemn moments of his existence, when his character was at 
stake, when life and death were trembling in the balance, Jesus, fully 
aware of the meaning attached by his judges to the expression, claimed 
to be the Son of God. He heard, and heard without explanation or 
remonstrance, sentence of death passed upon him, for no other reason 
whatever but his making that claim. On any other supposition than 
that of his having been really that which his judges regarded him as 
asserting that he was; on any other supposition than that of his true 
and proper divinity, this passage of the Redeemer's life becomes worse 



672 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

than unmeaning in our eyes. There would be something more hera 
than the needless flinging away of a life, by the absence of all attempt 
to remove the misconception (if misconception it had been) upon 
which the death-sentence had been based. If only a man, if not the 
co-eternal, co-equal Son of the Father, in speaking of himself as he 
did before that Jewish council, Jesus was guilty of an extent, an 
audacity, an effrontery of pretension, which the blindest, wildest, 
most arrogant religious enthusiast has never exceeded. The only 
way to free his character as a man from the stain of such egregious 
vanity and presumption, is to recognise him as the Son of the 
Highest. If the divinity that was in him be denied, the humanity 
no longer stands stainless. 

But we believe in both, and see both manifested in the very 
scene that is here before our eyes. Now, with the eye of sense we 
look on Jesus as he stands before this Jewish tribunal. It is the 
Man of sorrows, despised and rejected of men; treated by those 
lordly judges, and the brutal band of servitors, as the vilest of 
felons, the very refuse of the earth. Again, with the eye of faith we 
look on him, and he seems as if transfigured before us, when, break- 
ing the long-kept silence, he declares, "I am the Son of God, and 
hereafter ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of 
power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." From what a depth of 
earthly degradation, to what a height of superhuman dignity does 
Jesus at once ascend! And is it not striking to notice how he him- 
self blends his humiliation and exaltation, his humanity and divinity, 
as he takes to himself the double title, and binds it to his suffering 
brow: Tfue Son of man; The Son of God. 






OUTLINE STUDIES. 672a 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 



The beginning of Christ's trial had already shown that there was 
to be no observance of right or justice. It had been found impossible 
to prove before the Sanhedrim any of the charges brought against him. 
At last he had been put under oath, according to the Jewish form, by 
Caiaphas and asked whether he was the Messiah and the Son of God; 
and only when he himself with the greatest calm and courage answered, 
" I am," did his enemies secure the statement upon which they 
condemned him to death as a blasphemer. 

In the same way the trials before Pilate and Herod are marked by 
false accusations on the part of the Jews and almost every degree 
of vulgar curiosity, caprice, malfeasance, weakness, cruelty, wrong, 
selfishness, and cowardice on the part of these rulers; but through 
all the shameful and terrible ordeal Christ remains the same quiet, 
silent, dignified, gentle, unperturbed, thoughtful, magnanimous, for- 
giving, heroic, and self-forgetting being that he has been. At no 
point in his earthly life does his perfect divine-human character shine 
out more clearly. It is not strange that Pilate, though at last yielding 
to the insatiable hatred and clamor of the Jews, should find no ground 
of fault in Jesus, and should seek by every device that can suggest 
itself to save him from the death sentence. But there are fatal points 
of weakness about the moral nature and position of the procurator, 
and at last the Jewish plotters drive him to the point where he delivers 
Christ to them to be crucified. 

Pilate does not stand out as a wantonly cruel man nor a specially 
coarse and tyrannical governor, as Roman administrators then went. He 
showed a respect, pity, and even tenderness toward Christ that excites 
our wonder. He struggled as few men in his position would have done 
to evade the decision to which the Jewish leaders were seeking to drive 
him. When one sees his compunctions, his relentings, his hesitations, 
his embarrassments, in his repeated attempts to find a way of escape 
for himself and for Christ, one cannot but sympathize with him while 
still obliged to condemn. For condemn him one must. In the first 
place, he was false to his own convictions. He was satisfied that 
Christ was innocent, but instead of acting at once and decisively upon 
that conviction and setting Christ free, he dallied and parleyed. Again 
he showed a shameful degree of vacillation and allowed others to 
dictate to him, instead of having a mind of his own. He thus became 
the sport of currents of passion, evil motives, and the caprice of the 
mob. Then he finally allowed worldly self-interest to predominate 
over his sense of duty, and did a wrong never to be undone. 



6726 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

PART V. PASSION WEEK TO THE BURIAL. 
Study 21. Trials before Pilate and Herod. 

(1) Christ's first appearance before Pilate 6726-681 

a. The Sanhedrim has adjudged Christ worthy of death 6726 

6. But this sentence must be affirmed by the Roman governor 673 

c. The Jewish leaders early on Friday bring their case to Pilate.. . . 673-675 

d. He requires new ground of action 676, 677 

e. The Jews' general charge is sedition 677 

/. No adequate case is proven 678 

g. Question of Christ's kingship 678-681 

(2) Christ's appearance before Herod 681-690 

a. The embittered rulers are more vehement in attack 681 

b. Christ is notably calm and silent 682 

c. Has answered only when questioned by Caiaphas or Pilate as to his 

divine Sonship and kingship 682 

d. The Jews' allusion to Galilee 683 

e. Pilate sends Jesus to Herod 683, 684 

/. Herod's treatment of John the Baptist 684-687 

g. Idea that Jesus is John risen 687 

h. So Herod is pleased to see Christ 687, 688 

i. Wishes to see some miracle, to hear some teaching 689 

j. Criminal, licentious, curious, Herod finds that the divine voice is 

silent 689, 690 

k. He and his men of war set Christ at naught 689 

(3) Christ's second appearance before Pilate 690-701 

a. The thoughts of many hearts are revealed 690, 691 

b. Pilate's decision to let Christ be scourged his first great misstep. . 691, 692 

c. He next gives choice between release of Barabbas and Jesus 692 

d. Jews choose Barabbas and demand that Jesus be crucified 693, 694 

e. Pilate washes his hands as if to free himself from guilt 694, 695 

/. Christ scourged and mocked 696, 697 

g. Pilate presents him, saying, " Behold the man!" 697 

h. Pilate's last questions to Jesus, his silence and then his reply 698, 699 

i. Final threat of the Jews 699 

.;. Pilate's closing decision 699 

k. His course and character analyzed. '.', 700, 701 

m 

IV. 
Christ's First Appearance Before Pilate.* 

Christ's trial before the Jewish Sanhedrim closed in his convic- 
tion and condemnation. The strange commotion on the bench, in 
the midst of which the sentence was pronounced, and the outbreak 
of brutal violence on the part of the menials in the hall, being over, 
there was an eager and hurried consultation as to how that sentence 
could most speedily be executed. Had the full power of carrying 
^ut their own sentence been in their own hands, there had been no 

* Mark 15 : 1 ; Luke 23 • 1 4 ; John 18 : 28-39. 



HIS FIRST APPEARANCE BEFORE PILATE. 67£ 

difficulty; Jesus would have been led out instantly to execution. 
But Judea was now under the Roman yoke ; one bond and badge of 
its servitude being this, that while the old Jewish courts were per- 
mitted to try and to punish minor offences, the final judgment of all 
capital offences was reserved for the Roman tribunals. A Roman 
judge must pass the sentence, or, at least, must sign the warrant 
that consigns the criminal to execution. At Jerusalem, these reserved 
cases were brought up for adjudication at the time of the great 
festivals, when the Roman procurator, who resided ordinarily at 
Csesarea, visited the capital. For the last six years, Pontius Pilate 
had held this office in Judea, and he was now in the city on occa- 
sion of this passover. His order, therefore, for the execution must 
be obtained that forenoon, or perhaps not at all. It was now the 
last day before the passover on which a court of justice could be 
held; and if not held before six o'clock that evening — when the 
passover period began, then not for seven days thereafter. To keep 
Christ so long in bonds, awaiting his presentation to the Roman 
judge — with an uncertainty, besides, whether Pilate would take up 
the case after the passover — were a risk too perilous to run. They 
had, indeed, the whole day before them, and there was time enough 
to get Pilate's judgment before the passover commenced; but to 
keep Jesus not only bound, but bound with the order for his cruci- 
fixion hanging over him ; to keep him so for eight days to come : to 
keep him so till not only citizens of Jerusalem, but the inhabitants 
of the whole region round about, had heard all the particulars of 
his apprehension and condemnation — that also were peril which 
must, if possible, be avoided. And it could only be avoided by 
getting the crucifixion over before that sun which was just about to 
rise had set. 

Obviously there was urgent need of haste. The consultation, 
therefore, was a brief and a hurried one. The resolution was taken 
to bind Jesus once more — bind him as men condemned to death 
were wont to be bound — and to carry him at once to Pilate, and get 
from him the authority to proceed. Thither, therefore, to the official 
residence of the procurator, accompanied by the whole multitude 
that had assembled in and around the hall of Caiaphas, Jesus is con- 
veyed. It is a house which the Gentile has occupied and polluted ; 
a house from which the leaven has not been cast out; a house to 
cross whose threshold at such a time as this — on the very eve of the 
passover — was to disqualify the entrant from all participation in the 
holy rite. And, though there be among their number those who, 
Ci-om their position and previous acquaintance, might well have 



674 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

claimed the privilege of access, and asked a private audience of 
Pilate, to explain to him the nature of the case in which his inter- 
ference at such an unseasonable hour was required, jet will not one 
of these precise, punctilious chief priests, scribes, and councillors 
venture into that dwelling, lest they should be denied. They send 
in therr message by some of Pilate's officers or servants. At once, 
with Eoman courtesy, he comes out to them — to where they are all 
standing around the bound and sentenced Jesus. The glance of a 
quick eye at once revealed to Pilate the general object of this early 
visit. These, he knew, as his eye ran round the leaders of the 
crowd, were the Jewish judges, and this, as that eye rested upon 
Jesus, some one whom they were anxious to get punished. But why 
all this haste ? What can it have been that has brought together, 
at. such an unusual hour, all these city magnates, and drawn them as 
suppliants to his door? What extraordinary crime can this man, 
whom they have borne to him, have committed, that they are so 
impatient to see him punished ? He looks at Christ again. He had 
tried many; he had condemned many; his practised eye was familiar 
with the features which great guilt ordinarily wears, but he had 
never seen a great criminal look as this man looks; nothing here 
either of that sunk and hollow aspect that those convicted of great 
cnirtes sometimes show; nothing here of that bold and brazen front 
with which they still more frequently are wont to face their doom : 
he looks so gentle, so meek, so innocent, yet so calm, so self- 
possessed, so dignified. It does not seem that Pilate knew at first 
who this bound one was that now stood before him. He must have 
heard something, perhaps much, of Jesus of Nazareth before. He 
had been governor of the country all through the years of our Lord's 
public ministry, and it could scarcely be but that some report of his 
great sayings and doings must have reached his ear; but no more, 
perhaps, than Herod had he ever met him — ever seen him face to 
face; nor does he yet know that this is he. He only knows and 
feels that never has his eye rested upon one more unlike a hardened 
reprobate than this. His curiosity roused, his interest excited, the 
favorable impression which this first sight of the accused has made, 
cooperating with the instinctive and official sense of justice, Pilate's 
first words to these judges and heads of the Jewish people are, 
"What accusation bring ye against this man?" Was that questiou 
put in such a way, was it spoken in such a tone, or accompanied b} 
such a look as to convey the idea that he who put it was not at once 
ready to believe that any very heinous offence had been committed 
by that man ? Perhaps it did carry with it some indication of that 



HIS FIRST APPEARANCE BEFORE PILATE. 075 

kind. But whether so or not, it indicated this, that Pilate meant to 
open up or re-try the case, or, at least, to get at and go over, upon 
his own account, the ground of their condemnation ere he ratified it 
He could not but know — if he had not been distinctly told by the 
messengers whom the Jews sent to him, he saw it plainly enough in 
all the attendant circumstances — what it was that these Jews were 
expecting him to do. But he will do it in his own way. He will 
not sign off-hand, upon their credit and at their bidding, the death 
warrant of a man like this. Had ho been a judge of the purest 
and strictest honor he would not have signed in such a hurried 
way the death-warrant of any one ; but we know it from other 
sources, and the Jews who stood before him knew it too, that he was 
not such a judge, that he had often condemned without a hearing. 
And it is this which inclines us to believe that there was something 
in the very first impression that our Lord's appearance made upon 
Pilate which touched the better part of his nature, and not only 
stirred within his heart the wish to know what it was of which they 
accused such a man, but also the desire to ascertain, for his own 
satisfaction, whether or not that accusation was well founded. 

Obviously, to the men to whom it was addressed, Pilate's ques- 
tion was a disappointing one. They did not want, they had not 
expected to be summoned thus to adduce and to substantiate some 
charge against Jesus, which, in Pilate's judgment might be sufficient 
to doom him to death. They had hoped that to save himself the 
trouble of investigation, and in compliment to them at this passover 
season — a compliment which, when it cost him nothing, they knew 
that he was quite willing to pay — he would take their judgment on 
trust and proceed upon it. And they still hope so. They will let 
Pilate know how good a right they have to expect this service at his 
hand ; and how much they will be offended if he refuse it. When the 
question, then, is put to them, "What accusation bring ye against 
this man?" they content themselves with saying, "If he were not 
a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up to thee " — words 
of haughtiness and injured pride. 'Do you think that we, the 
whole assembled Sanhedrim; we, the very first men in this Jewish 
community over which you happen to have been placed; we, who 
have come to you, as we are not often wont to do, and are here 
before your gates to ask a very easy act of compliance with our 
will — do you think that we would have brought this man to 3^011, if 
we had not already ascertained his guilt? Do you think that we 
would either have ventured to offer such an insult to you, or our- 
selves perpetrate such injustice?' A very high tone this to take, 



676 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

which they have some hope will yet carry their point for them with 
the weak and vacillating governor. They are disappointed. They 
have stirred a pride that is equal to their own. If those Jews wont 
tell him what kind or degree of criminality it is that they attribute 
to this man, he, Pilate, wont put himself as a blind tool into then 
hands. ' If it be your judgment, and your judgment alone, that is 
to rule this man's case, "Take ye him, then," said Pilate, "and judge 
him according to your own law ;" ' — a refusal on Pilate's part to do 
the thing which they first hoped that they might get him to do 
off-hand; a refusal to countersign their sentence, whatever it was, 
and by whatever evidence supported. It was as much as saying, 
that so far as he had yet heard or known anything of this case, it 
was one which their own law, as administered by themselves, was 
quite competent to deal with. 

Let them take this man, and judge him and punish him as they 
pleased, provided only that they kept strictly within the limits that 
their conquerors had laid down. This were wholly to miss their 
mark. Their tone changes ; their pride humbles itself. They are 
obliged to explain to the governor, what he had known well enough 
from the first, but what they had not been candid enough to tell him, 
that it was a sentence unto death which they wished to get executed, 
a sentence which they were not at liberty to carry out. This deter- 
mination of Pilate to make personal inquiry into the grounds of that 
sentence, obliged them also to lodge some distinct and specific charge 
against Jesus ; one of such a kind that the governor would be forced 
to deal with it ; one too of sufficient magnitude to draw dowm upon 
it the punishment of death. Now mark the deep hypocrisy and utter 
falseness of these men. It wont do now to say that it was soleij T as 
a blasphemer, as calling himself the Son of God, that Jesus had 
been condemned before their bar. It wont do to let Pilate know 
anything of the only piece of evidence upon which their sentence 
has been founded. What cares he about that kind of blasphemy of 
which Jesus has been convicted? What cares that Roman law, of 
which he is the administrator, who or what any man thinks himself 
to be, or claims to be, in his relationship with God? Let any Jew 
be but a good and faithful subject to Csesar, and, so far as Caesar or 
Caesar's representatives are concerned, he may claim any rank he 
pleases among the gods. It was necessary, therefore, to draw the 
thickest veil of concealment over their own procedure as judges, 
although before the examination at this new bar was over, it oozed 
out that Jesus had made himself the Son of God — with what strange 
effect upon Pilate's mind we shall presently see. But, in the first 



HIS FIEST APPEAHAtfCE BEFORE PILATE. P>77 

instance, some civil or political offence, some crime against the com- 
mon law of the land, must be sought for to charge against Jesus. It 
was not easy to find or fabricate such a crime. Our Saviour had 
throughout most carefully and cautiously avoided everything like in- 
terference or intermeddling with, condemning or resisting, the ordi- 
nary administration of law, the policy and procedure of the govern- 
ment. He refused to entertain a question about the rights of inher- 
it \nce between two brothers, saying to him who sought his interfer- 
ence, "Man, who made me a judge or a ruler over you?" These 
very men, who are now about to frame their first accusation of him 
before Pilate, had tried to get him to pass his judgment upon the 
abstract question as to whether it was lawful to pay tribute to Caesar 
or not, and had failed in their attempt to entangle him. What con- 
cealment, then, what deception, what effrontery of falsehood in it — 
and it shows to what extremity they were driven — that when forced 
to adduce some specific accusation, they said, "We found this fellow 
perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, say- 
ing that he himself is Christ a king!" They here bring three dif 
ferent accusations against him, not one of which — in that sense in 
which alone they desire that Pilate should understand them — they 
know is true ; and one of which, the second, they know is absolutely, 
and in every sense of it, false. But it suits their object to represent 
the accused to Pilate as stirring up sedition, refusing to pay custom, 
denying the Koman right to reign over Judea, claiming to be king oi 
the country in his own person and of his own right. These, how- 
ever, were charges which they knew a Roman governor, whose chief 
business in their country was to see that the rights of the emperor 
whom he represented should suffer no damage, could not pass by; 
charges by no means unlikely to be true, for Judea was at this time 
in a most unsettled state. There were multitudes of Jews who ques- 
tioned Caesar's right to tax them ; multitudes who regarded him as a 
foreign usurper. Give them but a chance of success, and the great 
majority of the people would have risen then, as they rose after- 
wards, and risked their lives to regain their national liberties. One 
thing alone was suspicious — that such an accusation should come 
from such a quarter; that those leaders of the Jews should be so 
very eager to get a man punished for such a crime. It surely could 
not be so mighty an offence in their eyes. They were not themselves 
so very loyal to Rome as to be anxious to see an enemy to the Roman 
power cut off. Never before, at least, had they displa} r ed any great 
zeal in that direction. Pilate had no faith in their sincerity. He 
saw through their designs. Perhaps it was now that, for the first 



678 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

time, lie recognized that it was with Jesus of Nazareth, of whom he 
had heard so much, that he had to do. He did not entertain, be- 
cause he did not believe, the charge of his being i seditious and 
rebellions subject. But there was one part of the accusation which 
was quite new to him, which sounded ridiculous in his ears : that this 
poor Nazarene should say that he was a ting, the king of the Jews — 
a very preposterous pretension; one sufficient of itself, if there was 
any real ground for saying that it ever had actually been set forth, to 
suggest a doubt as to whether Jesus was a fit subject for any judicial 
procedure whatever being taken against him. Overlooking all else 
that had been said against him, Pilate turns to Christ, and says to 
him, "Art thou the king of the Jews?" He expected nothing else 
than to get an immediate disclaimer of the absurd pretension. To 
his surprise, however, Jesus calmly and deliberately replies, "Thou 
sayest it — I am the king of the Jews." Very curious this, to hear 
such a man, in such a condition, and in such circumstances, speak 
in such a way* He must be some egregious, designing, perhaps 
dangerous impostor, or, more likely, some wretched, ignorant, half- 
mad enthusiast or fanatic. He would like to search a little into the 
matter, and find out how it really stood. The man himself would in 
all likelihood be the first to supply the clue; he had so willingly 
and so calmly answered that first question that he would answer 
others. But it would be better to interrogate him alone, away from 
these accusers. He might not be so ready to answer further questions 
in then* hearing, or they might interfere and prevent Pilate prose- 
cuting the inquiry in his own way. He retired therefore to his own 
dwelling, into that part of it called and used generally as the judg- 
ment hall, and calls upon Christ to follow him. Jesus at once con- 
sents. He makes no scruple about crossing that threshold ; lie fears 
no contagion from contact with the Gentile ; his passover has been 
already held. And now, when they are alone, out of sight and out 
of hearing of those Jews, Pilate says again to him in a subdued and 
under tone, as of one really anxious to get at the truth, "Art thou the 
king of the Jews?"^ Waiving in the meantime anything like a direct 
reply, Jesus said to him, " Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did 
others tell it thee of me?" 'Art thou but repeating the words of 
others, or art thou asking out of the depths of thine own inquiring 
spirit? Hast thou, too, Pilate, felt the inward need of some one to 
be the governor and lord of thine unruled, unruly spirit ? Lies there 
behind the outward form and meaning of that question of thine, the 
indistinct, the inarticulate longing after another king and another 
kingdom than either Jews or Romans own ?' Was there, indeed, for 






HIS FIRST APPEARANCE BEFORE PILATE. 670 

one passing moment, far down in the depths of Pilate's struggling 
thoughts, an element of this kind at work ; and did Jesus, knowing 
that it was there, try thus to bring it up, that he might proceed to 
satisfy it? If so, what a moment of transcendent interest to the 
Eoman judge, of which had he but known how to take advantage, 
he too might have entered the kingdom, and shared its security 
and blessedness ! But he does not, he will not stoop to acknowledge, 
what we suspect was true, that there did mingle in the thoughts and 
feelings of that moment some element of the kind described. This is 
too personal, too bold, too home a question of the Nazarene. The 
pride of the Koman, the judge, swells up within his breast, overbear- 
ing his eternal interests as a man, a sinner — and so he haughtily 
replies: "Am I a Jew? Thine own nation, and the chief priests, 
have delivered thee unto me: what hast thou done?" The chance 
of reaching the individual conscience of this man has passed away ; 
the trial has been made, and it has failed ; Jesus must take up the 
question not as one between him and Pilate — between Pilate's con- 
science and Pilate's God — but as one simply between himself as a 
sentenced criminal, and those Jews without, who are his accusers. 
He will not answer the last question of the governor, "What hast 
thou done?" upon that he will not enter; it would be of no avail; 
but he will satisfy Pilate upon one point. He will convince him that 
he has committed no political offence ; that he never meant to set 
himself in opposition to any of this world's governments. " My king- 
dom," said he, " is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this 
world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered 
to the Jews; but now is my kingdom not from hence:" 'a king- 
dom rising up and extending itself by earthly weapons, by outward 
force of any kind, not such is that kingdom which I Jesus call my 
own.' 

But if noc, what kind of kingdom can it be? what kind of king is 
he who rules it ? So far satisfied, yet still wondering and perplexed, 
Pilate puts his question, not in its first specific form, but in a more 
general one: " Art thou a king then?" 'If not a king like our own 
Caesars or your own Herods, if not a king to fight with rival sove- 
reigns, or ask thy subjects to fight for thee, then in what sense a 
king ?' Our Lord's reply, we can perceive, was particularly adapted 
to the position, character, acquirements, experience, of him before 
whom he stood — a Roman official of high rank, educated, cultivated; 
a man of affairs, of large experience of men — men in different coun- 
tries and of different creeds; not given much, perhaps, to any deep 
or serious thought about religious matters, yet sufficiently acquaint- 



680 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

ed with the rival schools of philosophy and religion by which the 
then great living Bom an commonwealth was divided and distracted. 
Truth, moral truth, religious truth, was the one proclaimed object of 
research, of which some were saying, Lo, here it is, and others, 
Lo, there it is ; but of which he, Pilate, in pursuit of quite a different 
object, had learned to think that neither here nor there nor anywhere 
was it to be found. It is to this man that Jesus says, speaking in 
the language that w T ould be most intelligible to him : " Thou sayest 
that I iftm a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I 
into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every 
one that is of the truth heareth my voice." As these words fell upon 
the ear of Pilate, one can well enough imagine that the current of 
his thoughts ran thus : ' It is even as I suspected ; here is another of 
these pretenders, who each would have us to believe that he alonw 
had discovered the undiscoverable, that he alone had found out and 
got exclusive possession of the truth ; here is a new Jewish rival of 
those old Stoics of our own, who were ever teaching us that every 
wise man was a king — the setter-up of a new system, which he im- 
agines is to dethrone every other one that the world before has seen, 
whose fancy is that he himself is already upon the throne of his 
great kingdom — some poor, egotistical, yet quite harmless enthusiast, 
whose day-dream none would wish to break ! One thing, at least, is 
clear enough, that it is a quite empty, hollow charge these Jews are 
urging here against him. He may sit as long as he likes upon that 
ideal throne of his, without the throne of Tiberius being endangered ; 
he may get as many subjects as he can to enter that ideal kingdom 
of his,' and my master, the emperor, have not a loyal subject the less.' 
And so with that passing question to Jesus, "What is truth?"— a 
question he does not stay to get answered, as he has no faith that 
any answer to it can be given ; a question not uttered sneeringly or 
scoffingly, but rather sadly and bitterly, so far as he himself is con- 
cerned, having come to regard all truth as a phantom ; and with a 
kindly, tolerant, half -pitying, half-envious feeling towards Jesus — with 
that question put to Jesus by the way, Pilate goes out to the Jews, 
and says to them boldly and emphatically, " I find in him no fault at 
all ;" the faultlessness of Christ acknowledged, his kingly claims 
scarcely comprehended, and so far as comprehended, rejected, per- 
haps despised. 

Let each of us now ask himself, How stands it as to me and this 
kingdom of the truth, this one great king of the true? Is Jesus 
Christ to me the way, the truth, the life ? Does truth, simple, pure, 
sternal truth, stand expressed and exhibited to me in those words, 



HIS APPEARANCE BEFORE HEROD. 681 

those prayers, those acts, those sufferings, that life, that death, of 
Jesus Christ? The witness that he bore to the truth, in the living of 
that life and the dying of that death, have I listened to it, and be 
lieved in it, and submitted to it ? Am I of the truth ; a simple, 
humble, earnest seeker after it ; and have I this evidence of my being 
so, that I hear the voice of Jesus, hear it and hail it, among all the 
conflicting voices that are falling on my ear, as the voice of him who 
rightfully claims the lordship of my soul ? Is truth — the truth as to 
God, my Creator, my Father, my Redeemer ; the truth as to myself, 
what I am, what T ought to be, what I may be, what I shall be — is 
this truth not a mere form of sound words, not a mere congeries of 
acknowledged or accepted propositions ; but does it stand before me 
embodied in the person, the life, the death, the mediation of Jesus 
Christ ; and have I enshrined and enthroned him as King and Lord 
of my weak, m v sinful, my immortal spirit ? 



Christ's Appearance Before Herod.* 

Jesus had spoken quite frankly and openly to Pilate when they 
were together, out of sight and hearing of the Jews, alone in the 
judgment hall. It was quite different when, accompanied by Christ, 
Pilate came out again to the attendant crowd, and boldly said to 
them, " I find no fault in this man." So far, then, the chief priests 
and elders have failed. Failure always embitters. Failure here was 
what these men were by no means disposed to submit to. Pilate's 
assertion of his belief in the innocence of Jesus only made them the 
more vehement in their assertion of his guilt. They became the 
more fierce. They accused him, Mark tells us, of many things. But 
the waves and the billows of this swelling wrath of theirs broke 
harmlessly upon Christ. So absent, so unmoved, so indifferent did 
he appear, that it seemed as if he had not heard what they were 
saying against him, or hearing had not understood, or understanding 
had not heeded. Very different this retirement into himself — this 
unruffled composure, this unbroken silence, from those eager and 
animated utterances to which the governor had just been listening in 
*he hall within. Perhaps it is wounded pride that seals tho lips of 
Jesus. To men like these, animated by such a bitter personal hos- 

* Matt. 27 : 12, 13 ; Mark C : 14-16 ; Luke 9 : 7-9 ; 13 :31, 32 ; 23 :4-02. 



682 THE LITE OF CHEISI. 

tility to hhm. exhausting every epithet of vituperation, Leaping upon 
him all kinds of charges, Jesus may not condescend to give any 
answer. But he has nor treated, will not treat, the Roman governor 
in the same way; at least he will surely tell him why it is that he 
preserves this silence. Pilate says to him, " Hearest thou not how 
many things they witness against thee '?" There is no reply. The 
lips are as shut at the question of Pilate as at the accusation of the 
Jews. Christ has said all that he meant to say, done all that he 
meant to do, so far as those charges were concerned that they were 
now bringing against him. He had answered to the Eoman judge 
that the kingship which he claimed was not of a kind in any way to 
interfere with this world's governments; he had satisfied him of his 
perfect innocence as a subject of the state ; and, having done that, 
he would say and do no more. 

One observes an almost exact parallel as to his silences and his 
speakings in our Lord's conduct before the Jewish and the Gentile 
courts of justice. In that preliminary unofficial conversation he held 
with Annas before the Sanhedrim sat in judgment on his case. Jesus 
had spoken without reserve, had answered the high priest's ques- 
tions but too fully, and had brought down upon himself the stroke 
of the officer who stood by. But when the regular trial commenced, 
and charges were formally brought forward, and attempted by many 
~ses to be substantiated, Jesus held his peace, so long and so 
resolutely, manifesting so little disposition or desire to meddle in any 
way with the procedure that was going on, that the high priest rose 
from his seat, and put to him a question of the same import with 
that which Pilate afterwards put ; and the two questions met with 
the very same treatment, to neither of them a single word of reply 
was given. But when the high priest rose, and solemnly adjured 
Jesus to tell whether he was the Christ the Son of God, just as when 
Pilate asked whether he was the king of the Jews, and what kind of 
king he was, our Lord made instant and distinct reply. So far as 
we can see or understand the principle ruling here the Saviour's con- 
duct, determining the time to speak and the time to be silent, it was 
that when the matter immediately and directly concerned his 
Divine Sonship and Kingship, he will help his judges in every way 
he can; nay. he will himself supply the evidence they want. TTpon 
that count he will allow himself to be condemned ; he will cooperate 
with his enemies in bringing about his condemnation: but of ah 
these other lesser charges he will take no account; but leave the 
manifold attempts to fasten on him any other kind of charge, to break 
down of themselves, that, his enemies themselves being witnesses, it 



HIS APPEARANCE BEFORE HEROD. 683 

might be solely and alone as the Son of God, the King of Israel, 
that he should be convicted, condemned, and crucified. 

Among the many things that the chief priests were now accusing 
Jesus of in the presence of the governor, hoping still to convince 
Pilate that he was not the guiltless man that he had taken him to 
be, there was one thing that they put prominently forward, presented 
in every form, amplified in every way, on which they mainly relied 
in their dealings with Pilate — the setting forth of Christ as a ring- 
leader of sedition. "He stirreth up the people," stirreth them up 
against the constituted authorities, preaching rebellion through the 
whole country, not here in Judea alone, but there also in Galilee 
where he began this work. This allusion to Galilee as the birth- 
place of the alleged seditious movement may have been accidental; 
they may have meant merely thereby to signify how widespread 
the evil had been which they were calling upon Pilate to check; or 
it may have been done designedly, with that art which was to leave 
nothing unsaid or unsuggested, by which the governor could possibly 
be influenced. Galilee might have been named by them, to suggest 
to Pilate how difficult it was to produce proof of crime committed in 
so remote a district ; or to remind him that this Galilee, upon which 
so much of Christ's time and labor had been spent, was the chosen 
haunt of the resisters of the Koman authority, the cradle of most oi 
the seditious plots concocted against the emperor's government; or 
they might have known of the bad feeling that there was at this 
time between Pilate and the king of Galilee, and might have im- 
agined that it would be rather gratifying to Pilate than otherwise to 
lay his hand judicially upon one who might be regarded as a subject 
of that prince. 

However it was, no sooner had the words escaped their lips, than 
a happy thought suggested itself to Pilate. He is in great difficulty 
with this case ; he knows not how to deal with it. He had never been 
so importuned as he now was by those chief priests and elders; he 
never saw them more bent on anything than on the death of this 
man whom they had brought to him ; it would be easy to give him 
up to their vengeance — he had done as much as that before — but he 
was convinced of this man's innocence ; there was something too, so 
peculiar about his whole look, bearing, and conduct, that he could 
not make up his mind to have any share in sending him to b6 
executed as a common criminal. But now he hears, that part at 
least, perhaps the greater part of the offence alleged against hdni 
had taken place in Galilee, in that part of the country which was 
not under his jurisdiction, but belonged to that of Herod. This 



^ 



G84 THE LIEE OF CUEIST. 

Herod, tlio king of Galilee, happened at this very time to be in Jeru 
salem. Pilate will send the case to him ; and thus get the responsi- 
bility of deciding it shifted from his own shoulders, by laving it 
upon one who not only may be quite willing to assume it, but may 
regard as a compliment the reference of the case to his adjudication. 
There was a misunderstanding between the two — the Roman pro- 
curator and the Galilean king — which the sending of Jesus to the 
latter for trial might serve to heal. Pilate had done something to 
displease Herod— something, in all likelihood, in the very way of 
interfering with what Herod regarded as his rights, and the rights of 
his subjects. Some Galileans had been up lately at Jerusalem, 
offering sacrifice there. There had been a riot, which Pilate had 
promptly and summarily quelled; but in doing so he had mingled 
the blood of some of these Galileans with their sacrifices — cut them 
down without inquiring whose subjects they were, or what right they 
might have to demand a trial in one or other of the Herodian courts. 
For this, or some such fancied interference with his jurisdiction, 
Herod had taken offence at Pilate. The recognition of his jurisdic- 
tion, then, by sending to him for trial such a notorious person tts 
Jesus, would be the very kind of compliment most soothing to his 
kingly vanity. Herod recognized and appreciated the compliment; 
and whatever else Pilate lost by the line of conduct he pursued that 
day, he at least gained this — he got the quarrel between himself and 
Herod healed. 

The happy thought no soonei occurs to Pilate than he acts upon 
it. And now, guarded by some Roman soldiers, accompanied by the 
whole crowd of his accusers, Jesus is despatched to Herod. To enter 
into the scene that follows, we must go back a little upon this Herod's 
history. How John the Baptist and he became first acquainted 
we are not told. A part of the territory (Persea) over which Herod's 
jurisdiction extended, ran down along the eastern shore of the Dead 
Sea, and it is probable that it was in some of the circuits that he 
made of this district that he first fell in with the Baptist, engaged in 
his great ministry of repentance. Herod was greatly struck alike 
with the man and with his teaching. There was a strange fascina- 
tion about both which drew the attention of the king. As there was 
nothing about John's ministry to excite or gratify either the intellect 
or the fanc} r — no miracles wrought, no new doctrines propounded, no 
vivid picturing employed; as all was so purely moral, so plain, so 
pointed, so practical in his teaching, we must believe that what at 
first drew Herod to John, and made him listen with such pleasure, 
was that it was a faithful portraiture of men that John was drawing. 



t* 



HIS APPEARANCE BEFORE HEROD. 685 

an honest and fearless exposure of their sins lie made. Herod both 
admired and approved; but the pleasure that he had in observing 
John, and in listening to his instruction, was by no means a pure or 
untroubled one. He feared John, we are told, knowing that he was 
a just man and a holy. This fear was the fruit of guilt. He knew 
and felt what a different man John was from himself. The very 
presence of the Baptist was a rebuke, and he was not yet so hard- 
ened as to receive that rebuke without alarm. Nor did this first 
connection of the king with the Baptist terminate in the mere excite- 
ment of certain emotions, whether of respect, or admiration, or fear. 
Herod did many things, we are told, at John's bidding. I imagine 
that, in the first stage of their intercourse, John dealt with Herod 
as he dealt with the Pharisees, and the soldiers, and the publicans; 
that he laid his hand upon those open and patent offences of which, 
in common with other rulers, Herod notoriously was guilty. The 
king not only suffered him to do so, but even went the length of 
reforming his conduct in some respects, in obedience to the Baptist's 
instructions. But John did not stop there — did not stop where 
Herod would have liked ; but, stepping boldly into the inner circle 
of his private life, and laying his hand upon the stain which dis- 
figured it, he said to him. "It is not lawful for thee to have thy 
brother's wife." 

In all likelihood Herodias was not with Herod when first he met 
the Baptist, and heard him so gladly, and did many things at his 
bidding. This meeting mayhave happened in the wilderness, where 
Herod ranked but as one of John's large and public audience. But 
the king invited the Baptist to his court, and it was there, perhaps in 
presence of Herodias, that the rebuke of that particular transgres- 
sion was given. Herod's anger was kindled at what appeared an 
impertinent and officious intermeddling with his private conduct, his 
family affairs. And there was one beside him who resented that 
intermeddling still more than he, and was at pains to excite and to 
nurse his wrath. Herodias would have made short work of it with 
this sharp reprover ; she would have sealed his lips at once in 
death, so that she should no more be troubled with their unwelcome 
rebukes; and Herod, notwithstanding all his earlier readiness to 
hear and to obey, notwithstanding all his respect and regard for 
John, would have yielded to her desire ; but he feared the multitude, 
and, yielding to that fear, he made a compromise — he cast John 
into prison, and kept him there for months. But months could not 
quench the thirst for his blood that had been stirred in the heart of 
that second Jezebel; still she was asking for the head of the Baptist 



686 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

but Herod would not yield — and took no little credit to himself, we 
ruay believe, for being so firm. Forgetting that it was the fear of 
the multitude that overbalanced the influence of the queen, he might 
even have come to persuade himself that he was dealing very gently 
and tenderly with the Baptist. But the queen knew him better than 
he knew himself, and so with diabolic art contrived the plot that was 
to bring another and still weightier fear, to overbalance in its turn 
the fear of the multitude. 

All went as she desired. The evening for the royal supper came ; 
the chief men of Galilee, with the king in high good-humor at their 
head, sat down at the banqueting-table. Salome entered, and 
danced before them; the guests, heated with wine, broke out into 
rapturous applause. In a transport of delight, the king made the 
fatal promise, and confirmed it with an oath, that he would give her 
whatsoever she should ask. Salome went out to consult her mother 
as to what her request should be. There was little time spent in 
deliberation. The queen's reply was all ready, for she had conjec- 
tured what would occur ; and as Mark tells, Salome came in straight- 
way unto the king, and said, " Give me here John Baptist's head 
in a charger." The king was taken in the snare ; no time for 
thought was given, no way of escape left open. There was the oath 
which he had taken; there were the witnesses of that oath around 
the board. He could not break his oath without standing dishon- 
ored before those witnesses. The fear of the multitude is overborne 
by a still higher fear. He gives the order, and the deed is done. 
Unhappy man! entangled, betrayed by his own rash vow; his very 
sense of honor turned into the instrument that makes him a mur- 
derer ! Herod was exceeding sorry ; he knew well how wrong a 
thing it was that he was doing; it was with bitter self-reproach that 
the order for the execution was given. For a short time there were 
the stings of remorse, but these soon lost their power. John was 
beheaded, and no manifestation of popular displeasure made. John 
was beheaded; Herodias and Salome were satisfied, and Herod must 
have felt it a kind of relief to know that, as to him, he should be 
troubled by them no more. Remorse died out, but a strange kind of 
superstitious fear haunted Herod's spirit. Reports are brought to 
him of another strange teacher who has arisen, and to whom all men 
are now flocking, as they had flocked to the Baptist at the first. 
And Herod says, "John have I beheaded, but who is this of whom I 
hear such things?" 

"What perplexed him was, that it was said by some that John was 
risen from the dead, by some that Elias had appeared, by others 



HIS APPEARANCE BEFORE HEROD. 687 

that one of the old prophets had arisen. Herod hesitated for a tjjftif* 
which of these suppositions he should adopt; but at last he decid/j/i, 
and said to his servants, " This is John the Baptist ; he is risen horn 
the dead, and therefore mighty works do show forth themselves in 
him." He desired to see him; a desire in which there mingled at 
first so much of awe and dread, that he rather shunned than courted 
an interview; so much so, that when Christ came afterwards into 
Galilee, and there was some prospect they might meet, he had in a 
very artful way, by working on Christ's fears, persuaded him to 
withdraw from that part of the country. He sent some Pharisees, 
who said to Jesus, " Get thee out, and depart hence, for Herod will 
kill thee." Herod never could have really meditated such a deed. 
We know that afterwards when it was in his power, ho declined 
taking any part in the condemnation and crucifixion of Oesus. It 
was a cunning device to get Herod out of the embarrassments in 
which he found that Christ's residence and teaching within his terri- 
tory might involve him. And so Jesus seems to have dealt with it, 
when he said to the Pharisees, whom he at once recognized as the 
agents of the king, "Go," said he, "and tell that fox, Behold, T cast 
out devils, and I do cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day I 
shall be perfected" — 'my times and places for working and for 
finishing my work, are all definitely arranged, and that quite inde- 
pendently of any stratagem of this cunning king.' 

At last, at an unexpected time and place, and in an unexpected 
way, Jesus is presented to him by Pilate ; presented as a criminal at 
the bar, with whom he may use the greatest freedom, as one who 
will surely be anxious to say and do all he can in order to obtain his 
release. Herod, therefore, when he sees Jesus thus placed before 
him, is exceedingly glad — he had heard so much about him, had 
desired so long to see him. But now, as indicating at once the state 
of mind and heart into which worldliness and levity and licentious- 
ness have sunk this man, and as supplying to us the key that 
explains our Lord's singular conduct to him, let us particularly notice, 
that in the gladness which Herod feels in having the desire to see 
Christ thus gratified, there mingles no wish to be instructed, no 
alarm of a guilty conscience, no dread of meeting another Baptist to 
rebuke him for his iniquities. He has got over whatever compunc- 
tion he may at one time have felt. He has quenched the risings ol 
remorse within his heart. He has come to be once more on such 
good terms with himself; so much at ease, that when he looks at 
Jesus, it is with no disturbing remembrances of that bloody head 
once brought to him upon a charger — no shrinking dread that he 



688 THE LIFE OF CHETST. 

may see again the Baptist's form, and hear again the Baptist's 
voice. It is with an eager, idle, prurient curiosity — having a tinge, 
perhaps, of superstitious wonder in it, that he looks upon Jesus, and 
proceeds to question him. As compared with John, this new teacher 
had been distinguished by the working of miracles. And if he 
wrought them to save others, surely he will do so to save himself. 
Herod tries in every way he can think of, to induce him to work 
some wonder in his presence. How does Jesus act when addressed 
and treated thus by such a man? Shall it be as if the Baptist had 
indeed risen from the dead ? Will Jesus seize upon the opportunity 
now given, to take up, reiterate, and redouble upon the profligate 
prince the rebuke of his great forerunner ? Shall Herod hear it said 
to him now, in tones more piercing than ever John employed, It was 
not lawful for thee to take the Baptist's life ? Not thus does Jesus 
act. Herod puts question after question to him. Jesus looks at 
him, but opens not his lips. Herod asks and asks again, that some 
sign may be shown, some token of his alleged power exhibited. Jesus 
never lifts a finger, makes not a single movement to comply. Herod 
is the only one of all his judges whom Jesus deals with in this way—- 
the only one before whom, however spoken to, he preserves a con- 
tinuous and unbroken silence. It does not appear that, from the 
time when he was presented to Herod, to the time when he was 
sent away from him, a single word ever passed the Saviour's lips. 

That deep and death-like silence, the silence of those lips which 
opened with such pliant readiness when any word of gentle entreaty 
or hopeful warning was to be spoken, how shall we interpret it ? Was 
it indignation that sealed those lips ? Would Christ hold no inter- 
course with the man who had dipped his hands in such blood as that 
of the Baptist? Did he mean to mark off Herod as the one and only 
man so deeply stained with guilt that he will not stoop to exchange 
with him a single word ? It had been human this, but not divine ; 
and it is a divine meaning that we must look for in this dread and 
awful silence. There lived not, there breathed not upon the earth 
the man, however steeped in guilt, from whom that loving Saviour 
would have turned away, had but the slightest sign of penitence been 
shown, the slightest symptom of a readiness to listen and be saved. 
It was no bygone act of Herod's life that drew down upon him the 
doom oi that silence — though doom it little seemed to him to be ; it 
was the temper and the spirit of the man as he stood there before the 
Lord, after all that he had passed through ; it was that which did it. 
Why, the very sight of Jesus, connected, as he knew or fancied him 
to be in some mysterious way with John, should have been to Herod 






HIS APPEARANCE BEFORE HEROD. 689 

as though one risen from the dead had actually appeared in his pres- 
ence. It was he, not Jesus, that should have been speechless when 
they met; or, if he spake at all, it should have been to ask whether, 
in that world of spirits from which Christ came, there was mercy for 
a sinner such as he. But, instead of this, instead of anything like 
this, instead of deep or earnest or anxious feeling of any kind, there 
is nothing but a vainglorious wish to have some talk with this strange 
man, with whose name and fame all the country has been ringing, the 
cravings of an empty curiosity, the thirst for some showy exhibition 
of knowledge or of power. Let not that man think that he shall hear 
anything of the Lord. Christ could have spoken such a word as 
Herod never would have liked to hear again ; he could have wrought 
snch a miracle as would have turned the curiosity of the king into 
terror, his pride into abasement. But he is now to reap the fruit of 
his own doings, and that fruit is even this, that he is left unspoken to 
by the Lord from heaven. This silence, had he but interpreted it 
aright, was perhaps the very thing most fitted to speak homo to his 
conscience and his heart. But he did not understand it, did not 
enter into the reason of it, never thought of his own past conduct, 
his own present character, as the cause of it; it stirred him to no 
inquiry, it awakened in him no remorse. The only feeling that it 
appears to have produced was irritation ; the irritation of mortified 
vanity. Greatly galled, yet in no way softened, when he could make 
nothing of this mysterious man, who mantled himself in such obsti- 
nate silence, he and his men of war found nothing else to do than to 
set Christ at naught, and mock him, and array him in a white robe, 
and send him back to Pilate, 

A wonderful instance this of the onward, downward course of 
crime, particularly of that peculiar course of crime, levity, and licen- 
tiousness which Herod had pursued ; an instance how speedily and 
how thoroughly a human heart may harden itself against reproof, 
quench its convictions, get over its fears, and bring down upon itself 
that doom, than which there is none more awful: "Ephraim is joined 
to his idols ; let him alone." To be left utterly and absolutely alone 
to have all the voices that speak to us of God and duty, the voice ot 
conscience from within, the voice of providence from without, the 
voice which comes from the lips of Jesus — to have all these voices 
hushed, hushed into an unbroken, perhaps eternal stillness; can one 
conceive any condition of a human spirit sadder or more awful? Yet 
this is the very condition to which the abuse of opportunity, the 
indulgence of passion, the drowning of the voices when they do speak 
to us, are naturally and continually tending. 

Uf« of Christ 44 



690 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

My young friends, let me entreat you especiahy to take a double 
warning from such a case as this : 1st, Beware how you deal with 
your first religious convictions; tremble for yourselves if you find 
them dying by a slow death, as the withering, hardening spirit of 
worldliness creeps in upon your soul, or perishing suddenly amid the 
consuming fires of some burning passion. They tell us that there is 
no ice so close and hard as that which forms upon the surface which 
once was thawed ; and there is no hardness of the human spirit so 
great as that which forms over hearts that once had melted. And, 
2d, Beware of hot fits of enthusiasm, in which you go farther in pro- 
fession than you are prepared to go in steady and sustained practice. 
Herod went too far at first, and got himself involved among obliga- 
tions and restraints from which, when the hour of temptation came, 
he flung himself free by an effort which damaged his moral and spir- 
itual nature more than it had ever been damaged before ; his revul- 
sions from religion all the greater on account of the temporary and 
partial, but hollow and merely emotional entertainment that he had 
given to its claims. What you do, do it with all your heart ; for it is 
good to be zealously affected in a good thing ; but do it intelligently, 
calmly, deliberately, as those who know and feel that it is the great- 
est of all transactions that you engage in, when it is with God and 
for your soul's eternal welfare that you transact. 



VI. 

Christ's Second Appearance Before Pilate.* 

"This child," said good old Simeon, as he took up the infant Jesus 
into his arms to bless him — " this child is set for the fall and rising 
again of many in Israel ; and for a sign that shall be spoken against ; 
that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed." Never were 
those words more strikingly fulfilled than in these closing scenes of 
the Saviour's life which we are now engaged in tracing. Then many 
fell — those forsaking, despairing disciples of Jesus — but fell to rise 
again; then was that sign set up, against which so many shafts of so 
many kinds were launched ; and then were the thoughts c f many 
hearts revealed — among others those of Judas, and Peter, and Caia- 
phas, and Herod, and Pilate — revealed by the very closeness of their 

* Luke 23 : 13-16 , Malt. 27 : 15-23 ; Luke 23 : 20-23 ; Matt. 27 : 26-30 ; John 
19:1-10. 



HIS SECOND APPEARANCE BEFORE PILATE. 691 

contact with Christ, by the peculiarity of those relationships to hire 
into which they were then thrown. Just now our attention was 
concentrated upon Herod; to-day let us fix our eyes on Pilate, and, 
taking him up at that stage where we left him, let us try to under- 
stand and to follow the working of his thoughts and feelings during 
those two hours of their earthly lives in which he and Jesus had to 
do with one another — he in the character of judge, Jesus in the char- 
acter of one accused and condemned by the Sanhedrim. 

You will remember that when first he heard, among the other 
accusations which the high priests lodged against him, that Jesus had 
said that he himself was Christ a King — struck at once with the sin- 
gularity of the pretension, and with the appearance of the man who 
made it, Pilate called on Christ to follow him into the inner hall of 
his residence ; that there, when alone with him, omitting all reference 
to any other charge, he asked him particularly about this one; that 
Christ fully satisfied him as to there being nothing politically danger- 
ous or offensive in the claim to a kingdom which he had put forth; 
that, bringing Christ out along with him to the Jews, he had said at 
once and decidedly, "I find no fault in this man;" and that then., 
taking advantage of a reference to Galilee, he had sent Jesus off to 
Herod, to see what that Galilean king and judge might think and do. 
In this way he hoped to be relieved from the painful and embarrass- 
ing position in which he felt himself to be placed. 

He was disappointed in this hope. Jesus was sent back to him 
by Herod; sent back without any judgment having been pronounced; 
sent back in such a way as to indicate that Herod as well as he made 
light of this poor Galilean's pretension to be a king — thought it, in 
fact, more a matter for mockery and ridicule than for serious judicial 
entertainment. Although a considerable body of the high priests 
and of the people had accompanied Jesus to and from the bar of 
Herod, yet in that interval there had been to some extent a scatter- 
ing of the crowd. Pilate, therefore, called together afresh the chief 
priests, and the rulers, and the people — the latter particularly men- 
tioned, as Pilate had now begun to think that his best chance of 
gaining the end upon which his heart was set — the deliverance of 
Christ out of the hands of his enemies — would be by appealing, over 
the heads of their rulers, to the humanity of the common people. 
When all, then, were again assembled, he made a short speech to 
them, reiterating his own conviction of Christ's innocence, confirming 
it by the testimony of Herod, and closing by a proposal that he hoped 
would be at once accepted — "I will therefore chastise him, and release 
him." But why, if he were innocent, chastise him at all ? Why noi 



692 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 

at once acquit the culprit, and send him away absolved from the bai 
of Roman judgment ? It was a weak and unworthy concession, the 
first faltering of Pilate's footstep. He cannot but say that he has 
found nothing worthy of death in this man ; he is himself thoroughly 
satisfied that there is nothing in him worthy of any punishment; but 
it will please his accusers, it will conciliate the people, it may open 
the way to their readier acquiescence in his after-dismissal, to inflict 
on him some punishment, a proposal not dictated by any spirit of 
cruelty, springing rather from the wish to protect Jesus from the 
greater penalty, by inflicting on him the less ; yet one that weakened 
his position, that made those sharp-sighted Jews at once perceive 
that he could be moved, that he was not ready to take up and stand 
firmly and fixedly upon the ground of Christ's innocence. In defer- 
ence to them, he has gone so far against his own convictions; he may 
go farther. He has yielded the inch ; they may force him to yielc 1 
the ell. The proposal, therefore, of chastising Jesus, and letting hin. 
go, is rejected, and rejected so as to throw Pilate back upon sorat 
other, some new device. 

He recollected that at this time of the passover it was a custom- 
ary thing, in compliment to the great assembly of the Jews in their 
metropolis, for the procurator to arrest in a single instance the ordi- 
nary course of justice, and to release whatever prisoner the people 
might ask to be given up. He recollected at the same time that 
there was a notable prisoner, who then lay bound at Jerusalem, one 
Barabbas, who for sedition and murder had been cast into prison ; 
and the idea occurred to Pilate that if — instead either of asking them 
broadly and generally who it was that they wished him to release, or 
whether they would let him choose for them and release Jesus — he 
narrowed in this instance the choice, and presented to them the 
alternative of taking Barabbas or Jesus, they could scarcely fail to 
choose the latter. To give the greater effect to this proposal Pilate 
ascended the movable rostrum or judgment-seat, which stood upon 
the tesselated pavement that ran before the vestibule of the palace, 
and addressing himself to the multitude, said to them, " Whom will 
ye that I release unto you? Barabbas, or Jesus who is called 
Christ?" 

While waiting their answer, a message was brought to him, the 
messenger having been instructed to deliver it immediately, wherever 
he was, and however he might be engaged. It came from his wife ; 
was distinct and somewhat authoritative, "Have thou nothing to do 
with that just man, for I have suffered many things this day in a 
dream because of him." Pilate's wife was not a Jew, nor did sh* 






HIS SECOND APPEARANCE BEFORE PILATE. 693 

mix much with the common people of the land. That she should 
have learned so much of Jesus as to think and speak of him as " that 
just man " — that she should have been so much concerned when she 
heard that her husband had been asked to try him, as to take this 
uncommon step of sending a warning to him on the judgment-seat — 
may be regarded as a proof how widespread and how deep the im- 
pression was that Christ had made. 

The time occupied by the hearing and considering this message— 
whose warning knell rung in strange harmony with the alarm that 
was already pealing in Pilate's spirit — gave to the chief priests and 
the rulers the opportunity they were so quick to seize, to prompt the 
crowd as to the answer they should give to Pilate's proposal. We do 
not know what kind of stimulants were employed upon this occasion , 
but we all do know what a flexible, impressible, excitable thing a 
city mob is, when composed, as this one mainly was, of the lowest of 
the people ; and we can at least easily conjecture what the firebrands 
were which the expert hands of the priesthood threw in among that 
mob, inflaming its passions to the highest pitch, and giving the bum 
ing mass into their hands, to be directed as they desired. Recovered 
a little from the disturbance which his wife's message cost him, Pilate 
turns again to the people, and says to them, " Which of the two, then, 
will ye that I release unto you ?" They say, "Barabbas." Surprised 
and annoyed at the reply, almost willing to believe there has been 
some mistake, he puts it to them in another form : " Will ye that I 
release unto you the King of the Jews?" using the epithet, in the 
belief that they, as well as he, will look upon its claimant more as an 
object of pity than of condemnation. But now they leave him in no 
doubt as to what their will and pleasure is: "Away with this man," 
they all cry out at once, " and release unto us Barabbas !" " What 
shall I then do with Jesus, which is called Christ?" This weak and 
almost pitiful asking of them what he should do, ends, as all such 
yielding to popular prejudices, cringing to popular passions, ever 
does ; it makes the multitude more confident, more imperious. The 
governor has put himself into their hands, and they will make him 
do their will. "What shall I- do, then, with Jesus?" "Let him be 
crucified !" they say. Crucified ! It is the first time the word has 
been named in Pilate's hearing, the first time they tell him articu- 
lately what it is they desire to have done with Jesus. Crucify him — 
give up to that worst and most ignominious of all deaths this meek 
end gentle man, who he is sure has done no wrong; whom he sees 
well enough that the chief priests seek to get rid of from some reli- 
gious antipathy that they have taken against him : can the people 



694 THE LIFE OF GHEIST. 

mean it ? He had fancied, whatever the chief priests thought, that 
tlieij had a different feeling towards him. " Why," in his surprise he 
says to them, "what evil hath he done?" But this now excited and 
uproarious crowd is far past the point of answering or arguing with 
the governor. Its one and only cry is, "Let him be crucified!" 
Twice Pilate asks them to tell him what crime he had committed, 
that they should doom him to a felon's death. He gets but that cry 
repeated, with louder, angrier voice. Yet a third time — clinging to 
the hope that he may still succeed in extricating Jesus from their 
grasp, without putting himself entirely wrong with them — he puts the 
query, " Why, what evil hath he done ?" and gathering up a little 
strength, as if he were determined to take his own way, and act upon 
the suggestion that he had thrown out a few moments before, he adds, 
" I have found no cause of death in him. I will therefore chastise 
him, and let him go." The very mention of letting him go stirs the 
crowd to a tenfold frenzy, and now the voices of the chief priests them- 
selves are heard swelling and intensifying the cry, "Crucify him! 
crucify him !" 

Before a storm like this who can stand ? He has done — so Pilate 
thinks — the most he can. If he go farther, he will raise another city 
tumult which it will cost many lives to quell, and the quelling o/ 
which by force may expose him to the very same charges of tyranny 
and cruelty which, upon more than one occasion of the kind before, 
had actually been transmitted to Home against him, and drawn down 
upon him the rebuke and displeasure of the emperor. The yielding 
is but the sacrifice of a single life, which may be made without in- 
volving the governor in any danger. But the resisting; who can tell 
in what that might land ? Still, however, he is not at ease. He him- 
self scarce knows the reason why; but somehow he never saw the 
man whose blood he would like so ill to have resting upon him as the 
blood of Jesus. The private interview they had together in the hall 
had raised some strange misgivings in Pilate's heart. What is it 
about this man that has given him so strong a hold upon Pilate, and 
makes him struggle so hard to get him released? Pilate himself 
could not have told ; but even now, though he has at last resolved to 
give him up, he will not, cannot do it without trying in somo way to 
throw off his shoulders the responsibility of his death. "When 
Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but rather that a tumult 
was made, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, 
saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person : see ye to it 
Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on 
our children." And he delivered Jesus to their will. 



HIS SECOND APPEARANCE BEFORE PILATE. 695 

Now, let us pause a moment here in the narrative to mark the 
inner workings of conscience and of humanity in the heart of Pilate. 
Ct seemed an ingenious device to give the people their choice. It 
was resorted to from a desire on his part to rescue Jesus. It would 
gain, as it first seemed to him, a double object — it would prevent the 
Jews from saying that he had screened a seditious man, and yet it 
would rescue an innocent one from death. But to what did it 
amount? It proceeded on the assumption that Christ was guilty; it 
asked that as one righteously condemned, he might by an act of 
grace be released. There lay one fatal flaw in the proposition. But, 
still worse, it put the matter out of Pilate's hands into those of the 
people. It was a virtual renunciation on Pilate'? part, of the rights 
and prerogatives of the judge. And by thus denuding himself of his 
own proper official position, Pilate put himself at the mercy of a 
fickle and infuriated populace, and gave them that hold and power 
over him which they so mercilessly employed. 

This crying out, "Crucify, crucify him!" as contrasted with the 
hosannas that a few days before had greeted Christ's entrance into 
Jerusalem, has been often quoted to prove how rapid the changes in 
popular sentiment sometimes are, how little a multitude can be trust- 
ed. But was it the same crowd which raised the hosannas of the 
one day, that uttered the "Crucify him, crucify him!" of the other? 
I rather think that had we been present upon both occasions, and 
intimately acquainted with the inhabitants of Jerusalem, we should 
have seen that the two crowds were differently constituted ; and that, 
however true it may be that tides of public feeling often take sud- 
denly opposite directions, this can scarcely be quoted as an instance 
exactly in point. 

But very curious is it to mark the expedient to which Pilate had 
recourse, in that public washing of his hands. He delivers Jesus up 
to be crucified. Therein lay his guilt ; he might and should have 
refused to become a party to his crucifixion. Believing Jesus to be 
innocent, to give him up to death was to take a large share of the 
criminality upon himself. And yet he thinks that when he gets the 
Jews to take it upon them, he has relieved himself, if not entirely, 
yet in great measure, of the responsibility. He regards himself as 
one coerced by others; and when these others are quite willing to 
take on themselves the entire weight of the deed, he imagines that 
this will go a great length in clearing him. And if ever placed under 
strong compulsion from without, urged on to a certain course of con- 
duct which in our conscience we disapprove, we yield, and in yield- 
ing take comfort to ourselves from others saying that they are quite 



696 THE LIFE OF CHPwIST. 

ready to incur the whole responsibility of the affair, then let ns re- 
member that we are acting over again the part of Pilate; and that 
just as little as that outward washing of his hands did anything to 
clear him of the stain he was contracting, so little can we hope that 
the guilt contracted by our being a consenting and cooperating party 
in any deed of injustice or dishonor, may be thus mitigated or wiped 
away. 

Pilate has given up Jesus to the will of the multitude : given him 
up to be crucified. The judge's work is done; there remains only 
the work of the executioner. Over that it is no part of the procura- 
tor's office to preside. Why, then, does Pilate not withdraw ? We 
might have thought that, wearied with his conflict with the rabble, 
and oppressed with painful feelings as to its issue, he would have 
been only too glad to retire — but he cannot ; a singular fascination 
still binds him to the spot — perhaps the lingering hope that he may 
yet succeed in rescuing the victim from his bloodthirsty enemies. He 
hands Christ over to his soldiers, to have that scourging inflicted 
which was the ordinary precursor and preliminary to crucifixion. It 
might not be difficult from the narratives of eye-witnesses to give 
you some idea of what a military scourging was, what kind of instru- 
ment they used in it, what kind of wounds that instrument made, 
what terrible torture was inflicted, to what length that torture was 
often carried ; but we would rather have a veil drawn over the purely 
physical sufferings of our Saviour, than have them pressed promi- 
nently upon our eye. We recoil from the attempts so often made to 
excite a sympathetic horror by vivid details of our Lord's bodily suf- 
ferings. We feel as if it were degrading him to present him in that 
character, in which so many, equal nay superior in their claims upon 
our sympathy, might be put beside him. 

But the scourging did not satisfy the rude and brutal soldiers 
who had got Christ into their hands. As Ptomans, these men knew 
little, cared little about any kingship that Christ might claim. With 
them it could not be, as with the Jews, a subject of religious hate or 
scorn. It was a topic alone of ribald mh'th, of Gentile mockery. 
This Koman cohort takes the hint that Herod's men of war had given 
them; who had thrown a white robe over Jesus, clothing him with 
something like the garment that their own kings wore, that they 
might set at naught his vain pretensions to be a king. And now, 
when the scourging is over, these Roman soldiers will outdo their 
Jewish comrades; they will make a more perfect pantomime of this 
pool Galilean's royalty. They take some old military cloak, of the 
*aine color with the robes of their emperors; they throw it over his 



HIS SECOND A1TEAKANCE BEFOEE PILATE. 697 

bloody shoulders ; they plait a crown of thorns, and put it on his head 
they thrust a reed, as a mock sceptre into his right hand ; and then, 
when they have got hhn robed, and crowned, and sceptred thus, 
they bow the knee, and hail him as a king. But they tire even of 
that mock homage ; the demon spirit that is in them inspires the 
merriment with a savage cruelty ; and so, as if ashamed even of that 
kind of homage they had rendered, they snatch impatiently the reed 
out of his hand, and smite with it the crown of thorns, and drive it 
down upon his pierced and bleeding brow, and spit upon him, and 
smite him with their hands. 

All this is done in an inner court or guard-room, out of sight of 
the crowd that is still waiting without. Pilate sees it all; makes no 
attempt to mitigate the suffering or the mockery; is absorbed in 
wonder as he gazes upon Jesus — such a picture of silent, gentle, 
meek, unmurmuring, uncomplaining patience ! standing there, and 
taking all that treatment as though no strange thing were happening, 
as if he had expected all, were prepared for all, found no difficulty 
in submitting to all. There is no weakness in that patience ; but a 
strength, a power, a dignity. The sight moves Pilate's heart: it 
would move any heart, he thinks ; may it not move even the hearts 
of those people without ? may it not satisfy their thirst for vengeance 
to see the suffering Jesus reduced to such a pitiable plight as this ? 
He will try at least what the sight can do in the way of stirring such 
sympathy. He goes forth, with Jesus following, and says to the 
multitude, "Behold, I bring him forth to you, that ye may know that 
I find no fault in him ;" then, turning and pointing to Jesus, as he 
stood wearing still the purple robe and the crown of thorns, bearing 
on his face and person the marks of all the sufferings and indignities 
of the guardhouse, Pilate says, "Behold the man -3" 'behold and 
pity, behold and be satisfied — behold, and suffer me, now that 1 have 
thus chastised him, to let him go !' Alas ! he knew not the intensity 
of such fanatic hatred as that which those high priests and rulers 
cherished, and had, for the time, infused into the obedient crowd ; 
how it quenches every impulse of kindliness in the human heart, and 
nerves the human hand for deeds of utmost cruelty. That sight to 
which he points, instead of moving any pity, only evokes fresh out- 
breaks of ferocious violence; with unabated breath, the same wild 
cry from every side salutes the ear of the governor, " Crucify him, 
crucify him !" It not only disappoints, it j)rovokes Pilate to be baf- 
fled thus again, and baffled by such a display of immovable and un- 
appeasable malignity. " Take ye him and crucify him," he says ; 
1 crucify him as best you can, but do not expect that I shall counto- 



r 

698 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

nance the deed by any countersigning of your sentence in condemning 
the man, as if I thought he deserved to die — take ye him and crucify 
him, for I find no fault in him.' 

But the yielding governor is not in this way to slip out of their 
hands ; he, too, must be a party ; and now, at last, they tell him what 
hitherto they had concealed — to show him that theirs was not such a 
groundless sentence as he imagined it to be — " We have a law," they 
said, " and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the 
Son of God." It is impossible to say what ideas that phrase, " the Son 
of God," excited in the mind of Pilate. He was familiar with all the 
legends of the heathen mythologies, which told of gods and demigods 
descending and living upon the earth. Like so many of the educated 
Romans of his day, he had thrown off all faith in their divinity, and 
yet somehow there still lingered within, a faith in something higher 
than humanity, some beings superior to our race. And what if this 
Jesus were one of these ! never in all his intercourse with men had 
he met one the least like this, one who looked so kinglike, so God- 
like : kinglike, Godlike, even there as he now stands with a robe of 
faded purple and a crown of plaited thorns. Never in kingly gar- 
ments, never beneath imperial crown, did he see a sceptred sovereign 
stand so serene, so dignified, so far above the men that stood round 
him. Whatever the ideas were which passed through Pilate's mind 
when he heard that Jesus had made himself the Son of God, they 
deepened that awe which from the first had been creeping in upon 
and taking possession of his spirit; he was the more afraid. Once 
again, therefore, he takes Christ apart, and says to him, " Whence art 
chou?" 'In that first interview, you told me that your kingdom was 
not of this world, but whence art thou thyself ? art thou of this earth, 
I mean like the rest of us, or art thou other than thou seemest — 
comest thou indeed from heaven?' But Jesus gave him no answer. 
Of all the silences of our Lord that day, of which this in number was 
the fifth, it seems the most difficult to understand. Was it that 
Pilate, by the way in which he had then put the question, " What is 
truth?" without pausing for a reply, had forfeited his right to an 
answer now? Was it that Pilate was wholly unprepared to receive 
the answer; that it would have been a casting of pearls before swine 
to have told him whence Jesus was? Was it that the information, 
had it been given, while ineffectual to stop his course, might have 
aggravated Pilate's guilt, and therefore, in mercy, was withheld? 
We cannot tell; but we can perceive that the very silence was in it- 
self an answer; for, supposing Jesus had been a mere man, had 
come into this world even as we all come, would he, had he been sin- 



HIb SECOND APPEARANCE BEFORE PILATE. 699 

cere and upright, have hesitated to say whence he came ? would he 
have allowed Pilate to remain in doubt? would he have suffered him, 
as his question evidently implied, to cherish the impression that he 
was something more than human? We can scarcely think he would, 
By his very silence, therefore, our Lord would throw Pilate back upor 
that incipient impression of his Divine origin, that it might be con- 
firmed and strengthened in his breast. 

But here again, even as in the first interview, the haughtiness of 
the man comes in to quench all deeper thought. Annoyed by this 
silence, this calmness, this apparent indifference of Jesus, Pilate, in 
all the pride of oflice, says, " Speakest thou not to me ; knowest thou 
not that I have power to crucify thee, and power to release thee ?" — 
a very idle attempt to work upon the mere selfish fears of Christ ; — a 
question that brings a speedy answer, one in which rebuke and sym- 
pathy, are singularly blended: "Thou couldest have no power against 
me, except it were given thee from above." * That power of thine, to 
crucify me or release, which I do not dispute, which thou mayest ex- 
ercise as thou pleasest — do not think that it is a power original, 
underived, independent. Thou hast it, thou exercisest it but as 
Heaven permits; thou little knowest, indeed, what thou doest; it is 
as a mere holder of the power that thou art acting, acting at others' 
bidding; therefore, that Jewish judge, who knowing far better at 
least than thou what it was he did, and who it was that he was giving 
up to death* — "therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the 
greater sin." There is something surely very impressive here; that, 
sunk as Jesus was beneath the weight of his own sufferings — suffer- 
ings so acute that they well might have engrossed his thoughts and 
feelings, he yet so calmly weighs in the judicial balance the compa- 
rative guilt of the actors in this sad scene, and excuses, as far as he 
is able, the actings of Pilate. It had something of its proper effect 
upon the procurator. Instead of diminishing, it but increased the 
desire he already had to deliver him. He tried again; tried with 
still greater earnestness to effect his object. But again he failed, for 
now the last arrow in that quiver of his adversaries is shot at him : 
" If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend ; whosoever 
maketh himself a king, speaketh against Caesar." Pilate knew that 
already he stood upon uncertain ground with the imperial authori- 
ties ; he knew that a fresh report of anything like unfaithfulness to 
Caesar would cost him his oflice. The risk of losing all that by occu- 
pying that oflice he had hoped to gain, he was not prepared to face, 
and so, yielding to this last pressure, he gives way, and delivers up 
Jesus to be crucified. 



700 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Now, let us look a moment at the faults and at the rirtues of this 
man. The fact that it fell to his lot to be governor of Jndea at this 
time, and to consign the Saviour to the cross, inclines us to form ex- 
aggerated notions of his criminality. He was not, let us believe, a 
worse governor than many who preceded and who followed him in 
that office. We know from other sources that he frequently showed 
but little regard to human life — recklessly, indeed, shed human blood, 
when the shedding of it ministered to the objects of his ambition ; 
but we have no reason to believe that he was a wantonly cruel man, 
or a particularly oppressive and tyrannical governor, as governors 
then went. His treatment of Christ was marked by anything but a 
contempt for justice and an absence of all human feeling. He show- 
ed a respect, a pity, a tenderness to Jesus Christ that, considering 
the little that he knew of him, excites our wonder. He struggled 
hard to evade the conclusion to which, with such unrelenting malig- 
nity, the Jewish leaders drove him. No other king, no other ruler 
with whom Christ or his apostles had to do, acted half as conscien- 
tiously or half as tenderly as Pilate did. Herod, Felix, Agrippa — 
compare their conduct in like circumstances with that of Pilate, and 
does he not in your estimate rise superior to them all? There is 
something in the compunctions, the relentings, the hesitations, the 
embarrassments of Pilate — those reiterated attempts of his to find 
a way of escape for himself and for Christ, that takes a strong 
hold upon our sympathy. We cannot but pity, even while forced 
to condemn. Condemn, indeed, we must ; for — 

1. He was false to his own convictions; he was satisfied that 
Christ was innocent. Instead of acting at once and decidedly upon 
that conviction, he dallied and he parleyed with it; sought to find 
some way by which he might get rid of that clear and imperative 
duty which it laid upon him ; and by so doing he weakened and un- 
settled this conviction, and prepared for its being overborne. 

2. He exhibited a sad degree of vacillation, inconsistency, inde- 
cision. Now he throws all blame upon the priests : " I am innocent 
of his blood : see ye to it." Again he takes the entire responsibility 
upon himself: "Knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, 
and power to release?" Now he pronounces Jesus innocent, yet with 
the same breath proposes to have him punished as guilty : now he 
gives him up, and then he has recourse to every kind of expedient to 
rescue. Unstable as water, he does not, he cannot succeed. 

3. He allowed others to dictate to him. Carelessly and inconsid- 
erately he submits that to their judgment which he should have kept 
wholly within his own hold. He becomes thus as a wave of the sea, 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 701 

as a feather in the air, which every breeze of heaven bloweth about 
as it listeth. 

4. He allowed worldly interest to predominate over the sense ol 
duty. Such was the plain and simple issue to which it came at last : 
Do the thing he knew was right — acquit the Saviour — do that, arid 
run all risks; or do the thing he knew was wrong — do that, and 
escape all danger. Such was the alternative which was at last pre- 
sented to him. Alas for Pilate ! he chose the latter. But let each of 
us now ask himself, Had I been placed exactly in his position, with 
those lights only to guide me that he then had, should I have acted 
a better and bolder part ? We may think and hope we should ; but 
in thinking so and hoping so, let us remember how often, when con- 
science and duty pointed in the one direction, and passion and self- 
interest pointed in the other, we have acted over and over again the 
very part of Pilate ; hesitated and wavered, and argued and debated, 
and opened our ears to what others told us, or allowed ourselves to 
be borne away by some strong tide that was running in the wrong 
direction. Nay more, how often have we, knowing as we do, or pro- 
fess to do, who Christ was, whence he came, what he did for us, and 
whither he has gone — how often have we given him up into unfriendly 
hands, to do with him what they would, without even the washing of 
our own hands, or the saying what we thought of him. 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 



In this lesson come the last scenes in the passion of our Lord. 
Jesus is now delivered into the hands of officers to be led forth to the 
place of execution. This is probably the place outside the city wall, 
to the north of Jerusalem, and but a short distance away. 

But during the progress to Calvary Jesus falls under the burden 
of the cross, and Simon the Cyrenian is made to bear it. Yet this 
then unwilling service may have resulted in his becoming a Christian. 

The weeping of the women is to be noted, and Christ's words to 
them indicating the sorrows that are to come to them and their chil- 
dren in the destruction of Jerusalem. 

When the place of execution is reached, the soldiers strip Jesus 
and nail him to the cross, after which it is erected. They then divide 
his garments among them and cast lots for the vesture woven from the 
top throughout. Pilate's title is affixed above his head— that he is 
king of the Jews — and in spite of protest it stands. 

Rising superior to pain, Christ prays the Father to forgive those 



701a THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

who are causing his death. Among the mocking sayings of the passers- 
by is one notable for its spiritual and redemptive import — " He saved 
others, himself he cannot save." 

One of the malefactors crucified with him catches the spirit of these 
taunts, and voices his own reproaches; but the other, rebuking him, 
says, " Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom," 
and meets with the sublime response, " To-day shalt thou be with me 
in paradise." 

To his mother, standing near his apostle John, he says, " Woman, 
behold thy son," and to John, " Son, behold thy mother," thus ten- 
derly making provision for her whose sorrow is perhaps profounder 
than that of any other in the group of loving hearts about the cross. 

Now a strange darkness gathers about the scene, perhaps, first, a 
symbol of nature's anguish, and, second, typical of the deep darkness 
caused by the world's sin enshrouding the soul of our Lord, so that he 
cries in his agony, " My God, my God! why hast thou forsaken me? " 

At the ninth hour the darkness clears away, and the atoning suf- 
ferer expires in unclouded light with the words just uttered, "It is 
finished," and " Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit." 

The phenomenon which the apostle John records, that when the 
spear of the soldier pierced the side of Christ there flowed out water 
and blood, together with the fact that our Lord so soon expired, leads 
to the conclusion that under the strain of his soul-anguish more than 
that of the body his heart was broken, fulfilling the words, " Reproach 
hath broken my heart." 

Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, members of the Sanhedrim, 
and secretly disciples of Christ, had probably not been present when 
he was condemned. They now come forward and request Christ's 
body, and it is yielded to them. Providing richly linen and spices 
for its enswathment, and doubtless assisted by the devoted women, 
they prepare the sacred form and lay it in the new tomb. 



PART V. PASSION WEEK TO THE BURIAL. 
Study. 22. Crucifixion and Burial. 

(1) Occurrences on the way to Calvary 701&-711 

a. Jesus faints as he bears his cross 7016, 702 

b. Simon the Cyrenian bears the cross 702, 703 

c. The weeping women who follow 703 

d. Christ's words to them 703-711 

(2) The Crucifixion and title on the cross 711-713 

a. Christ affixed to the cross 711 

b. His clothing disposed of among the soldiers 711 

c. Pilate's superscription 711-713 



THE DAUGHTERS OF JERUSALEM WEEPING. 7016 

(3) Christ's prayer for his enemies 713, 714 

(4) Railings against Christ > 714, 715 

(5) The case of the two thieves 713-716 

a. The impenitent one 716 

b. The penitent one 716-723 

(6) Mary, the mother of Christ 723-733 

a. Christ makes provision for her 723, 724 

b. View of Christ's relations with his mother 724-733 

(7) Closing events 733-769 

a. The period of darkness 733, 734 

b. Christ's anguish of soul 734-741 

c. The saying " I thirst " 741-743 

d. The saying " It is finished " 743-748 

e. Last words 748, 749 

/. Attendant miracles 749-759 

(8) Physical cause of Christ's death 759-769 

a. Evidence that it was a breaking of the heart 759-769 

6. Light on Scripture 766 

c. Gives a spiritual and right view of Christ's sufferings 766-768 

d. Sacrificial death, preciousness of shed blood 768, 769 

(9) The burial. 769-776 

a. Service of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus , 769-774 

6. Service of the women 774, 775 

c. The grave in a garden 775, 776 



VII. 

The Daughters of Jerusalem Weeping.* 

The mockeries of the judgment hall ended, Jesus is delivered into 
the hands of the officers, to be led away to the place of execution. It 
cannot now be settled with certainty or exactness, where this hill of 
Calvary was situated, nor how far it was from the residence of Pilate. 
It lay, we know, without the city gate, and a very ancient tradition 
points us to a low, bare, rounded elevation, outside and near the 
walls, which resembled somewhat in its form a human skull, and is 
supposed to have got from that resemblance the name it bore, of 
Golgotha. If that indeed was Calvary, the way was but a short one 
which the sad procession had to traverse. First, however, ere begin- 
ning the mournful march, they strip our Lord of the purple robe they 
had thrown around his bleeding shoulders, and put his own raiment 

* Matt. 27 : 31-34 ; Luke 23 : 27-32. 



702 THE JLIFE OF CHRIST. 

on him. It is not said that the y took the crown of thorns from his 
bleeding brow ; he may have worn that to the last. It was part oi 
the degradation of a public crucifixion that the doomed one should 
assist in carrying to the place of crucifixion the instrument of death. 
They might have spared this indignity to Jesus ; they might have 
had some compassion as they saw with what a faint and weary step 
he walked. But compassion has no place in the hearts of these cru- 
cifiers, and so they lay the common burden on him. He sinks be- 
neath the load. They must relieve him of it; but who will bear it 
instead ? not one of themselves will stoop to the low office. A stran- 
ger, a man from Africa, Simon the Cyrenian, coming in from the 
country, meets them by the way. He would willingly have let the 
crowd go by that presses on to Calvary. But he is the very kind of 
man whom they can turn into a tool to do this piece of drudgery. 
They lay hold of him and compel him to take up what Jesus was too 
weak to bear. Unwillingly he had to obey, to turn upon his steps, 
and follow Jesus, bearing after him the cross ; a reluctant instrument 
of an overbearing soldiery and a haughty priesthood. 

So far as we can learn, Simon had no previous knowledge of, had 
no special interest in Christ ; instead of any great sympathy with 
him at the moment, he may rather have felt and resented it as a 
hardship, that such a service should have been exacted of him, and 
in such imperious fashion. But this compulsory companionship with 
Jesus in the bearing of the cross, carried him to Calvary ; the sad 
tragedy enacted there forced him with so many other idle spectators 
to the spot. He stood there gazing upon the scene; he heard the 
words that came from the lips of Jesus; he felt the three hours' 
darkness come down and wrap them all around. As the darkness 
cleared away, he saw the centurion standing transfixed before the 
central cross, as Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost. 
He heard that Roman officer, a stranger like himself, break forth 
with the exclamation : " Truly this was the Son of God !" What 
impression all that he saw and heard then made upon him we are not 
informed. From its being said, however, that he was the father of 
Alexander and Eufus, whom Mark speaks of as being well-known 
disciples of the Lord, may we not indulge the belief that He who, 
when he was lifted up, was to draw all men unto him, that day drew 
this Cyrenian to himself; that the sight of those sufferings and of 
that death led Simon to inquire ; that the inquiry conducted to disci- 
pleship ; and that ever after he had to thank the Lord for the strange 
arrangement of his providence, which led him along that way into 
the city, at the very time when they were leading Jesus out to be 



THE DAUGHTERS OF JERUSALEM WEEPING. 703 

crucified ; that he met the crowd at the very moment that thej were 
wanting some one to do that menial service which in so rough a 
manner they pressed him to undertake ? 

Another incident marked the sorrowful procession to Calvary. 
Some women of the city, looking at him, as first he bends beneath 
the cross, and then, with aspect so meek and gentle, yet so sad and 
sorrow-stricken, moves onward to be crucified, have their feelings so 
deeply touched, that, unable to restrain their emotions, they openly 
bewail and lament his doom. These are not the women who had 
followed him from Galilee, and been in the habit of ministering to 
him. No more than Simon, were they numbered with his disciples. 
It was not with such grief as any of the Marys would have felt, had 
they been in the crowd, that these women were affected. They were 
not lamenting the loss of a teacher, a master, a friend they had 
learned to revere and love. They had joined the crowd as it gath- 
ered in the city thoroughfares through which it passed. The singu- 
lar but common curiosity to look at men who are soon to die, and to 
see how they comport themselves in front of death, has drawn them 
on. Soon, however, out of the three who are going forth to be cruci- 
fied, their attention fixes upon Jesus. Something of him they may 
have known before ; some part of his story they may have picked up 
by the way. They hear nothing friendly to him from any who are 
there around them. The spirit of the crowd they mingle with is one 
of rude and bitter hatred towards him. But woman's loving eye 
looks on him, woman's tender heart is melted at the sight ; and de- 
spite of all the restraint that might have been imposed on them by 
the tone and temper of that crowd, revelling with savage delight at 
the prospect of his crucifixion, and led on by some of the chief men 
of the city, they give free vent to that generous pity which swells 
their bosoms. They weep as they follow him. This weeping — the 
only circumstance, so far as we know, attending his passage out to 
Calvary, that attracted the special notice of our Lord — was the only 
one which induced him to break the patient silence he has all along 
observed. But how does he notice it? What does he say? He 
stops; he turns; he fixes his eye upon the weepers; and he says, 
"Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, 
and for your children." 

" Weep not for me." Does he reject that simple tribute of sym- 
pathy which they are rendering? Is he in any sense displeased at 
the tears they shed? Does he blame or forbid such tears? Not 
thus are we to interpret our Saviour's words. It may be quite true 
that it was not from any very deep, much less from any very pure or 



704 THE LIFE OP CHRIST. 

holy fountain, that those tears were flowing. It may have been noth- 
ing about him but the shame and the agony he had to suffer which 
drew them out. Still, they are tears of kindly pity, and such tears 
it never could have been his meaning or intention to condemn. He 
had freely shed such tears himself. They fell before the tomb of 
Lazarus, fell simply at sight of the weeping sisters, and of the Jews 
weeping along with them. Sympathy with human suffering, simply 
and purely as such, claims the sanction of the tears which upon that 
occasion the Saviour shed : and that sanction covers the bewailing ol 
these daughters of Jerusalem. Jesus is not displeased with, Jesus 
does not reject, the expression of their pity. So far from this, the 
tender sympathy that they show for him stirs a still deeper sympathy 
for them within his heart. This is the way that he acknowledges and 
thanks them for their tears. He thinks of them, he feels for them ; 
he forgets his own impending griefs as he contemplates theirs. It 
had been but an hour or so before, that all the people who gathered 
round the bar of Pilate had cried out, " His blood be on us, and on 
our children !" How little did they know what a doom it was they 
thus invoked upon themselves; how near and how terrible! But 
Jesus knew it; had thought of it perhaps when that wild cry arose; 
was thinking of it still. He had those scenes of famine, fire, and 
slaughter, when that ill-fated city of his crucifiers should see the exe- 
cution of the sentence they had called down upon their own heads — 
he had them all before his eye when he turned to those women by the 
way, and said to them, " Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, 
but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For, behold, the 
days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, 
and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. 
Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us ; and to 
the hills, Cover us." 

Many of the very women who were lamenting Jesus by the way, 
may have perished in the siege of Jerusalem. That siege took place 
within less than forty years from the day of our Lord's crucifixion 
Some of the younger mothers of that weeping band would not ha^e 
then seen out the threescore years a»d ten of human life. Theii 
children would be all in middle life, constituting the generation upor 
which those woes were to descend which, three days before, while 
sitting quietly on the Mount of Olives with his disciples, looking 
across the valley upon the Holy City, Jesus had described by saying, 
that in those days there should be great tribulation, such as was not 
from the beginning of the world to that time, no, nor ever should be 
again. When in the straitness of that terrible siege, before the ter- 



THE DAUGHTERS OF JERUSALEM WEEPING. 706 

rors of the last assault, they crept into the underground passages and 
sewers of the city ; when those who escaped out of the city hid them- 
selves in the dens and rocks of the mountains — then were those proph- 
ecies of Isaiah and Hosea, which our Saviour had obviously before 
him — some of whose words, indeed, he quotes — in part fulfilled. But 
jusfc as, in that more lengthened discourse which our Lord had so 
recently delivered to his disciples, he mixed up in a way that it is 
impossible wholly to unravel, the destruction of Jerusalem, his sec- 
ond coming, and the end of the world ; so also, even within the com- 
pass of this short speech to the daughters of Jerusalem, it is easy 
enough to perceive that, beyond that nearer and more limited event, 
of which these women and their children were to be spectators, our 
Lord looks forward to the wider judgment, which at the close of all 
was to enfold the whole world of the impenitent in its embrace. 

And widening thus, as we are warranted to do, the scope and 
bearing of our Lord's words to these daughters of Jerusalem, let us 
ask ourselves, what message of instruction and of warning do they 
convey to us and to all men ? First, I think we shall not be wrong 
if we interpret them as indicating to us the unprofitableness of that 
sympathy with human suffering which takes in nothing but the suf- 
fering it sees, and which expends itself alone in tears. The sympathy 
excited in the breasts of these women of Jerusalem was of this kind. 
It was the spectacle of human grief then before their eyes which had 
awakened it ; there was a danger at least, that those sensibilities, so 
deeply moved as long as the spectacle was before them, should col- 
lapse when that spectacle was withdrawn, and leave the heart quick- 
ened, it might be, in its susceptibility to the mere emotion of com- 
passion, yet not otherwise improved. * Weep not, then,' the Saviour 
says to them, and says to us ; ' weep not for me ; weep not, or weep 
not long, and weep not idly, over any sight or story of human suffer- 
ing which calls not for your interference, which you have no power, 
not even by the sympathy that you expend upon it, to mitigate ; or if, 
naturally and irresistibly, properly and becomingly, your tears flow 
forth, stop not at their shedding, do not indolently indulge the mere 
sentiment of pity ; such indulgence may become but a piece of selfish 
gratification, narrowing the heart and paralyzing the* hand for the 
dispositions and the doings of a true and genuine benevolence.' Pity 
was never meant by the Creator to be separately or exclusively culti- 
vated as an isolated emotion ; it was meant to be the spring and the 
ally of a ready and generous aid held out to its object; to be tLe 
stimulus to, and the support of active effort. And such is the struc- 
ture of that beautiful and nicely balanced instrument, the human 

Ufa of Christ, 45 



706 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

spirit, that if this established connection between action and einotiou 
be overlooked ; if you foster the one without letting it lead on to the 
other, you do a serious damage to the soul ; you create in one region 
a monstrous overgrowth, in another a stunted deformity; and you 
dislocate and disconnect what the Creator intended should always be 
conjoined. 

Take here the familiar instance of indulging to excess the reading 
of exciting fiction — tales in which the hero of the story passes through 
terrible trials, endurances, agonies of mind and heart. Our heart 
may pulsate all through with pity as we read; we may wet with tears 
the page that spreads out some heart-rending scene. Now, I am not 
going to say that it is in itself a wrong, or a sinful thing, or even a 
hurtful thing, to read such stories. On the contrary, I believe that it 
is not wrong; that it may be as beneficial as it is agreeable occasion- 
ally to do so. There are peculiar and there are good services to 
mind and heart that a well-executed fiction may render, which you 
cannot have rendered in any other way so well. But let such kind of 
reading usurp the place that should be given to other and better 
employment; let the taste for it be gratified, without the considera- 
tion of anything beyond the pleasure that it yields ; let the heart of 
the reader, with all its manifold affections, give itself up to be played 
upon continually by the hand of some great master in the art of 
quickening to the uttermost its sympathies with human passions and 
human griefs ; will that heart, whose sensibilities may thus be stimu- 
lated until it yield to the gentlest touch of the great describer, will it 
be made kinder and better in its dispositions ? will it even be made 
more tender to the sorrows of the real sufferers among whom it lives 
and moves ? Is it not notoriously the reverse ? You will find few 
more selfish, few less practically benevolent, than those who expend 
all their stores of pity upon ideal woes. It is a deep well of pity, 
that which God has sunk in most human hearts. They are healing, 
refreshing, fructifying waters that it sends forth to cover the sorrows 
of the sorrowful ; but if these waters be dammed up within the heart, 
they become first stagnant, and then the breeders of many noxious 
vapors, under which the true and simple charities wither away. 

But let us now give to our Lord's words a more direct application 
to himself; to himself as the bearer of the cross. It cannot be thought 
that all sympathy with the Man of sorrows is forbidden. The recital, 
especially of his last sufferings, would not have been so full and so 
minute as it is in the sacred page, had it not been intended to take 
hold thereby of that sympathy. But the contemplation of Christ 
merely as a sufferer if it terminate in nothing else than the excite- 






THE DAUGHTERS OF JERUSALEM WEEIING 707 

ment of sympathy, is a barren contemplation. Offer him nothing 
besides your compassion, he repudiates and rejects it. It is to dis- 
honor the Redeemer to class him with those unfortunates, those un- 
willing victims of distress, whose unexampled sorrows knock hard at 
the heart of pity. Our pity he does not ask, he does not need. He 
spreads out before us his unparalleled griefs; he says, "Behold, and 
see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow ;" but he does so not 
to win from us compassion, but to prove how he has loved us, loved 
us even to the death, suffering and dying for our redemption. His 
sorrows should set us thinking of our own sins. Those sufferings 
which rested upon him when he took his place as our great Head 
and Representative, should bring up before our minds the sufferings 
which hang suspended over the heads of the finally impenitent and 
unbelieving. 

" Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves ; for if these things be 
done in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry ?" He w T as him- 
. self the Green Tree ; the fresh, the vigorous Yine — its stock full of 
sap, its branches all nourished by union with that parent, life-giving 
Stem. Was he, then — in condition so unlike to that of fuel ready for 
the fire — cast into that great furnace of affliction ? Had he to endure 
all its scorching, though to him unconsuming flames? What shall 
be done with him whose heart softens not at the sight of this divine 
and all-enduring love; whose heart closes up and hardens against 
God and Christ, till it becomes like one of those dry and withered 
branches which men gather and cast into the fire ? If God spared 
not his own Son, but gave him up to the death for us all, who is 
there, among the rejecters and despisers of such a Saviour, that he 
will spare ? Or if you would have the same argument set before you 
in yet another form, take it as presented by Peter: "For the time is 
come that judgment must begin at the house of God : and if it first 
begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel 
of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the 
ungodly and the sinner appear?" I shall make no attempt either to 
expand or enforce the argument thus employed. Let me only remind 
you, that it was by these strange and solemn words of warning, " If 
they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry ?" 
that our Lord closed the public teaching of his ministry upon earth. 
Quiet as our skies now look, and secure and stable as all things 
around us seem, the days are coming — he has told us among his 
latest sayings — when those who resist the approaches of his love 
shall see him in other guise, and when at the sight they " shall cry 
to the mountains, Fall on us, and to the hills, Cover us ; hide us from 



708 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

the face of him that sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath oi 
the Lamb : for the great day of his wrath is come ; and who shall be 
able to stand ?" How wise and good a thing were it for us all, in 
prospect of such days coming, to hide ourselves even now in the 
clefts of the smitten Rock ; to hide ourselves in Jesus Christ as oui 
loving Lord and Saviour; that, safe within that covert, the tabula- 
tion of those days may not reach us. 

And now let me crave your attention, for a moment or two, to 
that singular tie of thought which so quickly linked together in the 
mind of the Saviour the sight of those sorrowful daughters of Jeru- 
salem, with the fearful doom that was impending over their city. 
It was very remarkable how frequently and how vividly, in all its 
minute details, the coming destruction of Jerusalem was present to 
his thoughts during the last days and hours of his earthly ministry. 
From the day that he raised Lazarus from the grave — knowing that 
his enemies had taken counsel together to put him to death — Jesus 
walked no more openly among the Jews. He retired to the country 
beyond Jordan near to the wilderness. His hour at last approached, 
and he set his face to go up to Jerusalem to be crucified. He was 
in a part of the country that was under Herod's jurisdiction, and 
they told him that Herod sought to kill him. It cannot be, he said, 
that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem. The naming of the holy 
city; the thought of all the blood of all the prophets that was to 
cry out against her and to seal her doom, filled his heart with 
sadness, and instantly he broke out into the exclamation, " O Jeru- 
salem, Jerusalem ! thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them 
which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy 
children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under 
her wings, and ye would not ! Behold, your house is left unto you 
desolate !" 

On the Saturday before his death he arrives at Bethany. Next 
clay he ascends the Mount of Olives. In the city they have heard of 
his coming. They go out to meet him, they hail him as they had 
never done before. Garments and palm-branches are spread upon 
the ground that he is to tread. Before him and around him the 
voices of the multitude are shouting "Hosanna! Blessed is he that 
cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna to the Son of David ! 
Hosanna in the highest!" The ridge of the hill is reached, and 
Jerusalem bursts upon the view, lying across the valley spread out 
before the eye. He pauses; he gazes; his eyes overflow with tears. 
How strange it looks to that jubilant multitude ! Ah ! other sounds 
than their hosannas are falling on the Saviour's inner ear; other 



THE DAUGHTERS OF JERUSALEM WEETING. 70& 

Bights than that of their waving palm-branches are rising before hifl 
prophetic eye. He weeps; and without naming it, looking at the 
doomed city, and pointing to it, he says: "If thou hadst known, 
even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy 
peace ! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall 
come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, 
and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall 
lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and 
they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another ; because thou 
knewest not the time of thy visitation." 

Christ's last day in the temple and in Jerusalem was one of great 
excitement, of varied incident. Question after question about his 
authority to teach, about the payment of tribute-money, about the 
resurrection of the dead, is put to him. Attempt after attempt is 
made to entangle him in his talk. At last, from being the assailed, 
Jesus in his turn becomes the assailant, puts the question about 
Christ being'David's Son and David's Lord, which none of them can 
answer, and then proceeds to launch his terrible denunciations at 
the scribes and Pharisees. Woe is heaped upon woe, till all the 
righteous blood shed upon the earth seems coming on the men of 
that generation, and concentratedly upon that city of Jerusalem. 
Again, as when he first turned his face towards the holy city, the 
thought melts his spirit into tenderness; the indignation dissolves 
and passes away, as, taking up the same words he had used before, 
he exclaims, " Jerusalem, Jerusalem ! thou that killest the proph- 
ets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would 
I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth 
her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your 
house is left unto you desolate" — our Lord's last words within the 
temple. 

As they went out in the afternoon of that day, "Master," said 
one of his disciples to him, " see what manner of stones and what 
buildings are here ! Jesus answering said unto him, Seest thou these 
great buildings ? Verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here 
one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down." Later in 
the evening of that day — two days before his crucifixion — he sat 
upon the Mount of Olives over against the temple, looking once 
again at these great buildings, and in answer to an inquiry of his 
disciples, tired though he must have been with all the incidents of a 
most harassing day, he entered upon that lengthened prophecy in 
which he told how Jerusalem should be trodden down of the Gen- 
tiles. And now again, in this last stage of his way to Calvary, the 



710 THE LIFE OE CHKIST. 

days that lie had spoken of so particularly in that prophecy are 
once more before his eyes. How shall we explain all this? How 
was it that the city of Jerusalem had such a hold upon the heart ol 
Jesus Christ? How was it that the joys and the sorrows, the prov- 
ocations and the sympathies of his latest days, all alike, by some 
mysterious link of association, called up before his thoughts the 
terrible calamities which Jerusalem was to endure ? Grant all that 
can be claimed for Jerusalem in the way of preeminence both as to 
character and destiny over all the cities of this earth ; acknowledge 
the power that the close connection between our Lord's own death 
and its destruction must have exerted upon his mind ; but beside all 
this, may we not believe that in the human heart of Jesus, as we 
know that there was room for special affection, individual attach- 
ment, so also was there room for the patriotic sentiment, that love of 
country by which every true man of woman born is characterized ? 
Jesus was a Jew. Judea was the land of his birth. Jerusalem was 
the chief city of that land. Around its earlier and its later history 
there gathered all of joyful and of sorrowful interest that could touch 
a Jewish heart. And it touched the spirit of Jesus to contemplate 
its downfall. Are we wrong in thinking that with that which was 
divine, and that which was broadly human, there mingled a Jewish, 
a patriotic element in the grief which shed tears over its destruc- 
tion ? If love of country form part of a perfect man, shall we not 
believe that, purified from all imperfections — its narrowness, its ex- 
clusiveness, its selfishness — that affection had a place and found a 
home in the bosom of our Lord ? 

At such a season as this in the history of our own land we would 
fain believe so. A common loss, a common grief, a common sym- 
pathy, has knit all hearts together, as they have but rarely been 
united. He can have been no ordinary prince, whose death has 
caused so general, such universal grief. And she assuredly is no 
ordinary queen, whose sorrow has been made their own by so many 
millions of human hearts. There is something cementing, purifying, 
ennobling, in a whole nation mourning as ours does now. Let us 
try to consecrate that mourning, and while we give to our beloved 
Sovereign the entire sympathy of our heart, only wishing that she 
fully knew* what a place she holds in the affections of her people, 
let us lift up our hearts in gratitude to Him who has bestowed on us 
in her such a priceless treasure, and let us lift up prayers to heaven, 
that she may have imparted to her that comfort and strength, which, 

* This lecture was delivered on the Sunday succeeding the death of the 
prince consort, and before full expression of public sympathy had been given. 



THE PENITENT THIEF. 711 

in such sorrow as hers, the highest and the humblest of earth equallj 
need, and which are bestowed alike on all who ask, and trust, and 
hope, in and through Jesus Christ our Lord. 



VIII. 

The Penitent Thief.* 

One of the first things done by the Koman soldiers to whom tlie 
execution of the sentence was committed, was to strip our Saviour 
and to nail him to the cross. We do not know whether that cruel 
operation of transfixing the hands and feet was performed while the 
cross yet lay upon the ground, or after it was erected. They offered 
him — in kindness let us believe rather than in scorn, wine mingled 
with myrrh, an anodyne or soothing draught, fitted to dull or deaden 
the sense of pain, but he waved it away ; he would do nothing that 
might lull the senses, but might at the same time impair the full, 
clear, mental consciousness. The clothing of the criminal was in all 
such instances a legal perquisite of the executioners, and the soldiers 
proceeded to divide it among them. The other parts of his outer 
raiment they found it comparatively easy to divide ; but when they 
came to his inner coat, finding it of somewhat unusual texture, 
woven from the top throughout — it may have been his mother's 
workmanship, or the gift of some of those kind women who had 
ministered to his wants and comforts — they found no way of dis- 
posing of it so easy as to cast lots among them whose it should be, 
fulfilling thus, but all unconsciously, that Scripture, which, apart 
from this manner of disposal of the clothing, we might not well 
have understood how it could be verified — "They parted my raiment 
among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots." 

Pilate's last act that morning, after he had given up Jesus to be 
crucified, was to have the ground of his sentence declared in a wri- 
ting which he directed should be placed conspicuously upon the cross 
above his head. To secure that this writing should be seen and 
read of all men, Pilate further ordered that it should be written in 
Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, the three chief languages of the 
time. All the four evangelists record what this writing or super- 
scription was, yet in each the words of which it was composed are 
differently reported. No two of them agree as to the precise terms 

* Matt, 27 : 35-37 ; John 19 : 20-22 ; Luke 23 : 28-43 



712 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

of the title, though all of them are perfectly at one as to its meaning 
and intent. It does not in the least surprise us when four different 
narrators of some spoken, and it may be lengthened discourse, vary 
here and there in the exact words imputed to the speaker. It is 
somewhat different when it is a short written public document, like 
&hat placed over the Saviour's head on this occasion, the contents oi 
which are given. Here we might naturally have expected that the 
very words — literatim et verbatim — would have been preserved. And 
if it be not so, in this case as well as in others equally if not more 
remarkable, such as that of the few words spoken by the voice from 
heaven at the time of the Saviour's baptism, and those spoken by our 
Lord himself at the institution of his own supper — if it be the 
general sense, and not the exact words which the sacred writers 
present to us, is there no warning in this against the expectation of 
finding a minute and literal exactness everywhere in the gospel nar- 
rative ? no warning against our treating that narrative as if such 
kind of exactness had been intended, and is to be found therein ? 

The sight of this title, posted up so prominently above the head 
of Jesus, annoyed the Jews. The chief priests were especially pro- 
voked ; nor have we far to go to discover the reason of their provo- 
cation. Among the last things Pilate said to them, when he brought 
out Jesus, had been, "Behold your king!" And among the last 
things they said to Pilate, in the heat of their exasperation, and the 
urgency of their desire to have Jesus ordered off to instant crucifix- 
ion, was, " Away, away with him ! crucify him ! we have no king but 
Ccesar" — 'this man is not only a false pretender, but he and all others 
except Caesar are traitors who make any such pretension.' Thus, in 
that unguarded hour, did they absolutely renounce all desire or hope 
of having a king of their own. Pilate took them at their word, and 
put over Christ's head such a title as implied that any one claiming 
to be king of the Jews might, on that ground alone, whatever his 
rights and claims — on the ground simply of the allegiance which the 
Jews owed, and which the chief priests had avowed, to the Roman 
emperor — be justly condemned to death. When they looked at that 
legal declaration of his crime placed above Christ's head, and thought 
of all that it implied, the chief priests hurried back to Pilate, and 
asked him to make a modification of it, which should leave it open 
that there might be another king of the Jews besides Caesar. " Write 
act," they said to Pilate, "The king of the Jews; but that he said, 
I am king of the Jews." Let it be made patent, that it was as an 
illegitimate claimant that he was put to death. In il] humor with 
himself, in worse humor with them, Pilate is in no mood to listen to 






1 



THE PENITENT THIEF. 713 

thoir proposal. He will hold them tightly to their own denial and 
disavowal of any king but Caesar; and so, with a somewhat sharp 
and surly decisiveness, he dismisses them by saying, "What I have 
written I have written." 

Meanwhile, the soldiers have completed their cruel work. It was 
when in their hands, or soon after, that Jesus said, " Father, forgive 
them, for they know not what they do." Such rough handling as 
that to which our Lord had been subjected, such acute bodily suffer- 
ing as it had inflicted, have a strong tendency to irritate, and to 
render the sufferer indifferent to everything beyond his own injuries 
and pains. But how far above this does Jesus rise ! No murmur- 
ing; no threatening; no accusation; no lament no cry for help; no 
invoking of vengeance; no care for, or thought of self; no obtruding 
of his own forgiveness. It is not, I forgive you; but, "Father, for- 
give them." No sidelong glance even at his own wrongs and suffer- 
ings, in stating for what the forgiveness is solicited. "They know 
not what they do;" in this simple and sublime petition, not the 
slightest, most shadowy trace of self-consideration. It is from a 
heart occupied with thought for others, and not with its own woes ; 
it is out of the depths of an infinite love and pity, which no waters 
can quench, that there comes forth the purest and highest petition 
for mercy that ever ascended to the Father of mercies in the heavens. 
It is from the lips of a Brother-Man that this petition comes, yet 
from One who can speak to God as to his own Father. It is from 
Jesus on the cross it comes ; from him who submits to all the shame 
and agony of crucifixion, that as the Lamb that once was slain for 
us, he might earn, as it were, the right thus to pray, and furnish 
himself with a plea in praying, such as none but he possesseth and 
can employ. As a prophet, he had spoken to the daughters of Jeru- 
salem by the way; as the great High Priest, he intercedes for his 
crucifiers from the cross. 

Nor are we to confine that intercession to those for whom in the 
first instance it was exerted. "Wide over the whole range of sinful 
humanity does that prayer of our Kedeemer extend. For every 
sinner of our race, if it be true of him that he knew not what he did, 
that prayer of Jesus goes up to the throne of mercy. It was in 
comparative ignorance that those soldiers and those Jews crucified 
Jesus. Had they known what they did, we have an apostle's testi- 
mi <ny for believing they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 
B*it their ignorance did not take away their guilt. Had it done so, 
there had been no need of an intercessor in their behalf. It was 
with wicked hands they did that deed. Nor did their ignorance in 



714 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

any way entitle them to forgiveness ; then might it have been left to 
the Father to deal with them without any intercession of the Son. 
But their ignorance brought them and their doings within the pale 
of that divine mercy for which the prayer of the great Mediator was 
presented. How far we are entitled to carry this idea, I shall not 
presume to say. Was it because of that element — the element of an 
imperfect knowledge of what was done — that for the transgression 
of man a Saviour and a sacrifice were provided — not provided for 
the sin of fallen angels, of whom it could not, in the same sense, be 
said that they knew not what they did? Is it to that degree in 
which a partial ignorance of what we do, prevails — that ignorance 
not being of itself entirely our own fault — that our transgression 
comes within the scope and power of the intercession of the Re- 
deemer? To questions such as these we venture no reply. Only 
let us remember that sins rise in magnitude as they are committed 
against light, and that the clearer and fuller that light is, and the 
greater and more determined and obstinate our resistance to it, the 
nearer we approach to that condition which the apostle had in his 
eye when he wrote these words of warning: "For it is impossible for 
those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly 
gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted 
the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they 
shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance, seeing they 
crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open 
shame ; for if we sin wilfully after we have received the knowledge 
of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain 
fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall 
devour the adversaries." 

Then cruel work completed, the soldiers sit down before the 
cross to watch. Behind them the people stand beholding. There 
is a momentary stillness. It is broken by some passers-by— for the 
cross was raised near some public thoroughfare — who, stopping for 
a moment as they pass, look up, and wag their heads at Jesus, say- 
ing contemptuously to him, "Ah! thou that destroyest the temple, 
and buildest it in three days, save thyself ! If thou be the Son of 
God, come down from the cross." That ribald speech strikes the 
key-note for other like fiendish taunts and gibes. The chief priests, 
the scribes, the elders — their dignity forgotten — hasten to join the 
mockery; to deaden perhaps some unwelcome voices rising within 
their hearts. They do not act, however, like the honest common 
people, who in their passing by look up at or speak directly to 
Jesus — they do not, they dare not. They stand repeating, as Mark 



THE PENITENT THIEF. 715 

tells us, amowj themselves; saying of him, not to him, 'He saved 
others, himself he cannot save; let him save himself if he be Christ, 
the chosen of Gocl. If he be the king of Israel, let him come down 
from the cross, and we will believe him. He trusted in God,' (strange 
that they should thus blasphemously use the very words of the 
twenty-second Psalm,) 'let him deliver him now if he will have him, 
for he said, I am the Son of God/ The Roman soldiers get excited 
by the talk they hear going on around. They rise, and they offer 
him some vinegar to drink, repeating one of the current taunts, till 
at last one of the malefactors, hanging on the cross beside him, does 
the same. 

Strange, certainly, that among those who rail at Jesus at such a 
time, one of those crucified along with him should be numbered. 
Those brought out to share together the shame and agony of a 
public execution, have generally looked on each other with a kindly 
and indulgent eye. Outcasts from the world's sympathy, they have 
drawn largely upon the sympathy of one another. Since they were 
to die thus together, they have desired to die at peace. Many an 
old, deep grudge has been buried at the gallows-foot. But here, 
where there is nothing to be mutually forgotten, nothing to be for- 
given, nothing whatever to check the operation of that common law 
by which community in suffering begets sympathy; here, instead oi 
sympathy, there is scorn; instead of pity, reproach. What called 
forth such feelings, at such a time, and from such a quarter? In 
part it may have been due to the circumstance that it was upon 
Jesus that the main burden of the public reproach was flung. Bad 
men like to join with others in blaming those who either are, or are 
supposed to be, worse men than themselves. And so it may have 
brought something like relief, may even have ministered something 
like gratification to this man to find that when brought out for 
execution, the tide of public indignation directed itself so exclusively 
against Jesus — by making so much more of whose criminality, he 
thinks to make so much less of his own. Or is it the spirit of the 
religious scoffer that vents here its expiring breath? All he sees, 
and all he hears — those pouting lips, those wagging heads, those 
upbraiding speeches — tell him what it was in Jesus that had kindled 
such enmity against him, and too thoroughly does he share in 
that spirit which is rife around the cross, not to join in the expres 
sion of it, and so while others are railing at Jesus, he too will rail 
It is difficult to give any more satisfactory explanation of his con- 
duct, difficult in any case like this to fathom the depths even of a 
single human spirit; but explain it as you may, it was oue drop 



716 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

added to the cup of bitterness which our Lord on that da/ took into 
his hands, and drunk to the very dregs, that not only were his 
enemies permitted to do with him what they would, but the very 
criminal who is crucified by his side deems himself entitled to cast 
such reproachful sayings in his teeth. 

But he is not suffered to rail at Jesus unrebuked, and the rebuke 
comes most appropriately from his brother malefactor, who turning 
upon him, says, "Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the 
same condemnation ?" "Dost not thou fear God?" he does not need 
to say, Dost thou not fear man? for man has already done all that 
man can do. But, "Dost not thou fear God?" He knows then that 
there is a God to fear, a God before whose bar he and his brother 
sufferers are soon to appear; a God to whom they shall have to give 
account, not only for every evil action that in their past lives they 
have done, but for every idle word that in dying they shall speak. 
He knows it now, he feels it now — had he known and felt it sooner, 
it might have saved him from hanging on that cross — that over and 
above the condemnation of man which he had so lightly thought of, 
and so fearlessly had braved, there is another and weightier condem- 
nation, even that of the great God, into whose hands, as a God of 
judgment, it is a fearful thing for the impenitent to fall. 

"And we indeed justly." No questioning of the proof, no quar- 
relling with the law, no reproaching of the judge. He neither thinks 
that his crime was less heinous than the law made it, nor his punish- 
ment greater than the crime deserved. Nor do you hear from this 
man's lips what you so often hear from men placed in like circum- 
stances, the complaint that he had been taken, and he must die, 
while so many others, greater criminals than himself, are suffered to 
go at large unpunished. At once and unreservedly he acknowledges 
the justice of the sentence, and in so doing, shows a spirit penetrated 
with a sense of guilt. And not only is he thoroughly convinced of 
his own guilt, he is as thoroughly convinced of Christ's innocence 
"We indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; bui 
this man hath done nothing amiss." Little as he may have seen 01 
known before of Jesus, what he had witnessed had entirely convinced 
him that His was a case of unmerited and unprovoked persecution ; 
that he was an innocent man whom these Jews, to gratify their own 
spleen, to avenge themselves in their own ignoble quarrel with him, 
were hounding to the death. 

But he goes much farther than to give expression merely to his 
conviction of Christ's innocence — and it is here we touch upon the 
spiritual marvels of this extraordinary incident. Turning from speak- 



THE PENITENT THIEF. 717 

ing to his brother malefactor, fixing his eye upon, and addressing 
himself to Jesus, as he hangs upon the neighboring cross, he says, 
"Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." How 
came he, at such a time and in such circumstances, to call Jesus 
Lord? how came he to believe in the coming of his kingdom? It ie 
going the utmost length to which supposition can be carried, to im- 
agine that he had never met with Jesus till he had met him that 
morning to be led out in company with him to Calvary. He saw 
the daughters of Jerusalem weeping by the way ; he heard those 
words of Jesus which told of the speaker's having power to with- 
draw the veil which hides the future ; he had seen and read tho 
title nailed above the Saviour's head, proclaiming him to be the 
King of the Jews; from the lips of the passers-by, of the chief 
priests, the elders, the soldiers, he had gathered that this Jesus, now 
dying by his side, had saved others from that very death he is him- 
self about to die, had professed a supreme trust in God, had claimed 
to be the Christ, the Chosen, the Son of God : and he had seen and 
heard enough to satisfy him that all which Jesus had claimed to be 
he truly was. Such were some of the materials put by Divine Prov- 
idence into this man's hands whereon to build his faith ; such the 
broken fragments of the truth loosely scattered in his way. He takes 
them up, collects, combines ; the enlightening Spirit shines upon the 
evidence thus afforded, shines in upon his quickened soul ; and there 
brightly dawns upon his spirit the sublime belief that in that strange 
sufferer by his side he sees the long-promised Messiah, the Saviour 
of mankind, the Son and equal of the Father, who now, at the very 
time that his mind has opened to a sense of his great iniquity, and 
he stands trembling on the brink of eternity, reveals himself as so 
near at hand, so easy of access. His faith, thus quickly formed, goes 
forth into instant exercise, and, turning to Jesus, he breathes into his 
convenient ear the simple but ardent prayer, " Lord, remen ber me 
when thou comest into thy kingdom." 

The hostile multitude around are looking forward to Christ's ap- 
proaching death, as to that decisive event which shall at once, and 
for ever, scatter to the winds all the idle rumors that have been rife 
about him ; all his vain pretensions to the Messiahship. The faith 
of Christ's own immediate followers is ready to give way before that 
same event; they bury it in his grave, and have on] y to say of him 
afterwards, " We hoped that it had been he that should have redeem* 
ed Israel." Yet here, amid the triumph of enemies, and the failure 
of the faith of friends, is one who, conquering all the difficulties that 
sense opposes to its recognition, discerns, even through the da) ^ on- 



718 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

velope which covers it, the hidden glory of the Kedeemer, and openlj 
hails him as his Lord and King. Marvellous, indeed, the faith in oui 
Lord's divinity which sprung up so suddenly in such an unlikely 
region ; which shone out so brightly in the very midnight of the 
world's unbelief. Are we wrong in saying that, at the particular mo- 
ment when that testimony to Christ's divinity was borne, there was 
not another full believer in that divinity but this dying thief ? If so, 
was it not a fitting thing, that He who was never to be left without a 
witness, now when there was but one witness left, should have had 
this solitary testimony given to his divinity at the very time when it 
was passing into almost total eclipse ; so nearly wholly shrouded from 
mortal vision? There were many to call him Lord when he rose 
triumphant from the tomb ; there is but one to call him Lord as he 
hangs dying on the cross. 

But let us look upon the prayer of the dying thief not only as a 
public testimony to the kingly character and prerogative of Jesus, 
but as the prayer of individual, appropriating faith ; the earnest, 
hopeful, trustful application of a dying sinner to a dying Saviour. 
His idea of Christ's character and office may have been obscure ; the 
nature of that kingdom into possession of which he was about to 
enter, he may have but imperfectly understood. He knew it, how- 
ever, to be a spiritual kingdom ; he felt that individually he had for- 
feited his right of admission to its privileges and its joys ; he believ- 
ed that it lay with Jesus to admit him into that kingdom. Not with 
a spirit void of apprehension, may he have made his last appeal. It 
may have seemed to him a very doubtful thing, whether, when re- 
lieved from the sharp pains of crucifixion, the suffering over, and the 
throne of the kingdom reached; Jesus would think of him amid the 
splendors and the joys of his new kingly state. Doubts of a kindred 
character have often haunted the hearts of the penitent, the hearts of 
the best and the holiest; but there were two things of which he 
had no doubt: that Jesus could save him if He would, and that if 
He did not he should perish. And it is out of these two simple 
elements that genuine faith is always formed, a deep, pervading, 
subduing consciousness of our own unworthiness, a simple and entire 
trust in Christ. 

It has been often and well said, that while this one instance of 
faith in Jesus formed at the eleventh hour is recorded in the New 
Testament, in order that none, even to the last moment of their being, 
flhould despair — there is but this one instance, that none may pre- 
sume upon a death-bed repentance. And even this instance teaches 
most impressively that the faith which justifies always sanctifies; 



THE PENITENT THIEF. 719 

that the faith which brings forgiveness and opens the gates of para- 
dise to the dying sinner carries with it a renovating power ; that the 
faith which conveys the title, works at the same time the meetness 
for the heavenly inheritance. Let a man die that hour in which he 
truly and cordially believes, that hour his passage into the heavenly 
kingdom is made secure ; but let a window be opened that hour into 
his soul, let us see into all the secrets thereof, and we shall discover 
that morally and spiritually there has been a change in inward char- 
acter corresponding to the change in legal standing or relationship 
with God. It was so with this dying thief. True, we have but a 
short period of his life before us, and in that period only two short 
sayings to go upon ; happily, however, sayings of such a kind, and 
spoken in such circumstances, as to preclude all doubt of their entire 
honesty and truthfulness; and what do they reveal of the condition 
of that man's mind and heart ? What tenderness of conscience is 
here; what deep reverence for God; what devout submission to the 
divine will; what entire relinquishment of all personal grounds of 
confidence before God ; what a vivid realizing of the world of spirits ; 
what a humble trust in Jesus; what a zeal for the Saviour's honor; 
what an indignation at the unworthy treatment he was receiving ! 
May we not take that catalogue of the fruits of genuine repentance 
which an apostle has drawn up for us, and applying it here, say of 
this man's repentance, Behold what carefulness it wrought in him ; 
yea, what clearing of himself; yea, what indignation ; yea, what fear; 
yea, what vehement desire ; yea, what zeal ; yea, what revenge ! In 
all things he proved himself to be a changed man, in the desires and 
dispositions and purposes of his heart. The belief has been express- 
ed, that in all the earth there was not at that moment such a believer 
in the Lord's divinity as he ; would it be going too far to suggest, 
that in all the earth, at that moment, there was not another man 
inwardly riper and readier for entrance into paradise ? 

"Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." 
Loud and angry voices have for hours been ringing in the vexed ear 
of Jesus, voices whose blasphemy and iDhumanity wounded him far 
more than the mere personal antipathy they breathed. Amid these 
harsh and grating sounds, how new, how welcome, how grateful, this 
soft and gentle utterance of desire, and trust, and love ! It dropped 
like a cordial upon the fainting spirit of our Lord, the only balm tnai 
earth gave forth to lay upon his wounded spirit. Let us, too, be 
grateful for that one soothing word addressed to the dying Jesus, and 
wherever the gospel is declared lei the words which that man spake 
be repeated in memorial of him. 



720 THE LIFE OF CUBIST. 

"Lord, remember me when thou cornest into thy kingdom." H« 
will not ask to be remembered ntiW'j he will not break in npon this 
season of his Lord's bitter anguish. He only asks that, when the 
sharp pains of his passion shall be over, the passage made, and the 
throne of the kingdom won, Jesus will, in his great mercy, then think 
of him. Jesus will let him know that he does not need to wait so 
long ; he will let him know that the Son of man hath power, even on 
earth, to forgive sin ; that the hour never cometh when his ear is so 
heavy that it cannot hear, his hand so shortened that it cannot save ; 
and the prayer has scarce been offered when the answer comes, 
'* Verily, I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise." 

The lips may have trembled that spake these words.; soft and low 
may have been the tone in which they were uttered ; but they were 
words of power, words which only one Being who ever wore human 
form could have spoken. His divinity is acknowledged : the moment 
it is so, it breaks forth into bright and beautiful manifestation. The 
hidden glory bursts through the dark cloud that veiled it, and, in all 
his omnipotence to save, Jesus stands revealed. What a rebuke to 
his crucifiers ! They may strip his mortal body of its outward rai- 
ment, which these soldiers may divide among them as they please ; 
his human soul they may strip of its outer garment of the flesh, and 
send it forth unclothed into the world of spirits. But his kingly 
right to dispense the royal gift of pardon, his power to save, can they 
strip him of that? Nay, little as they know it, they are helping to 
clothe him with that power, at the very time when they think they 
are laying all his kingly pretensions in the dust. He will not do what 
they had so often in derision asked him that day to do ; he will not 
come down from the cross ; he will not give that proof of his divini- 
ty ; he will not put forth his almighty power by exerting it upon the 
world of matter. But on this very cross he will give a higher proof 
of his divinity ; he will exert that power, not over the world of 
matter, but over the world of spirits, by stretching forth his hand and 
delivering a soul from death, and carrying it with him that day into 
paradise. 

" Verily, I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in para- 
dise." Jesus would not rise from the sepulchre alone ; he would 
have others rise along w T ith him. And so, even as he dies, the earth- 
quake does its allotted work, work so strange for an earthquake to 
do —it opens not a new grave for the living, it opens the old graves 
©i die dead ; and as the third morning dawns, from the opened graves 
the bodies of the saints arise with the rising body of the Lord — 
types and pledges of the general resurrection of the dead verifying. 



THE PENITENT THIEF. 721 

by their appearance in the holy city, the words of ancient prophecy : 
" Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they 
arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust ; for thy dew is as 
the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out her dead." And as 
Jesus would not rise from the sepulchre alone, so neither will he enter 
paradise alone. He will carry one companion spirit witn him to the 
place of the blessed ; thus early giving proof of his having died upon 
that cross that others through his death might live, and live for ever. 
See, then, in the ransomed spirit borne that day to paradise, the 
primal trophy of the power of the uplifted cross of Jesus! What 
saved this penitent thief? No water of baptism was ever sprinkled 
upon him ; at no table of communion did he ever sit ; of the virtue 
said to lie in sacramental rites he knew nothing. It was a simple 
believing look of a dying sinner upon a dying Saviour that did it. 
And that sight has lost nothing of its power. Too many, alas ! have 
passed, are still passing by that spectacle of Jesus upon the cross ; 
going, one to his farm, another to his merchandise, and not suffering 
it to make its due impression on their hearts ; but thousands upon 
thousands of the human race — we bless God for this — have gazed 
upon it with a look kindred to that of the dying thief, and have felt 
it exert upon them a kindred power. Around it, once more, let me 
ask you all to gather. Many here, I trust, as they look at it, can 
say, with adoring gratitude, He loved me; he gave himself for me; 
he was wounded for my transgression, he was bruised for mine ini- 
quity ; he is all my salvation, he is all my desire. Some may not be 
able to go so far ; yet there is one step that all of us, who are in any 
degree alive to our obligations to redeeming love, can take — one 
prayer that we all may offer; and surely, if that petition got so 
ready audience when addressed to Jesus in the midst of his dying 
agonies, with certain hope of not less favorable audience may we 
take it up, and shaping it to meet our case, may say, Now that thou 
hast gone into thy kingdom, O Lord, remember me. 

Yet once more let the words of our Lord be repeated, " To-day 
shalt thou be with me in paradise." But where this paradise? what 
this paradise ? We can say, in answer to these questions, that with 
this heavenly paradise into which the redeemed at death do enter, 
the ancient, the earthly paradise is not fit to be compared. In the 
one, the direct intercourse with God was but occasional ; in the other 
it shall be constant. In the one, the Deity was known only as lit 
revealed himself in the works of creation and in the ways of his prov- 
idence ; in the other, it will be as the God of our redemption, the 
God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus, that he will be reo- 

Ufe of ClirUt 40 



722 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

ognized, adored, obeyed — all the higher moral attributes of his nature 
shining forth in harmonious and illustrious display. Into the earthly 
paradise the tempter entered ; from the heavenly he will be shut out. 
From the earthly paradise sad exiles once were driven ; from the heav- 
enly we shall go no more out for ever. Still, however, after all such 
imperfect and unsatisfying comparisons, the questions return upon 
us, Where, and what is this paradise of the redeemed ? Our simplest 
and our best answers to those questions perhaps are these : Where 
is paradise ? wherever Jesus is. What is paradise ? to be for ever 
with, and to be fully like our Lord. We know — for God has told us 
so, of that paradise of the redeemed — that it is a land of perfect light ; 
the day has dawned there ; the shadows have for ever fled away. It 
is a land of perfect blessedness ; no tears fall there ; no sighs rise 
there; up to the measure of its capacity, each spirit rilled with a 
pure, never-ending joy. It is a land of perfect holiness; nothing that 
defileth shall enter there ; neither whatsoever loveth or maketh a He. 
But what gives to that land its light, its joy, its holiness in the sight 
of the redeemed ? it is the presence of Jesus. If there be no night 
there, it is because the Lamb is the light of that place. If there be 
no tears there, it is because from every eye his hand has wiped off 
every tear. The holiness that reigneth there is a holiness caught 
from the seeing him as he is. And trace the tide of joy that circu- 
lates through the hosts of the blessed to its fountain-head, you will" 
find it within that throne on which the Lamb that once was slain is 
sitting. To be with Jesus, to be like Jesus, to love and serve him 
purely, deeply, unfailingly, unfalteringly — that is the Christian's 
heaven. 

"I love," says one, "to think of heaven;" and as I repeat the 
words, they will find an echo in each Christian heart : 

" I love to think of heaven ; its cloudless light, 
Its tearless joys, its recognitions, and its fellowships 
Of love and joy unending ; but when my mind anticipates 
The sight of God incarnate, wearing on his hands 
And feet and side marks of the wounds 
Which he for me on Calvary endured, 
All heaven beside is swallowed up in this ; 
And he who was my hope of heaven below 
Becomes the glory of my heaven above." 

Yet once again let the memorable words of our Lord be repeated, 
H To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise." What a day to thai 
dying man ! How strange the contrast between its opening and its 
elose, its morning and its night ! Its morning saw him a culprit con- 
demned before the bar of earthly judgment; before evening shad- 



THE MOTHER OF OUR LORD. 723 

owed the hill of Zion, he stood accepted at the bar of heaven. The 
morning saw him led out through an earthly city's gates in company 
witli one who was hooted at by the crowd that gathered round him; 
before night fell upon Jerusalem, the gates of another city, even the 
heavenly, were lifted up, and he went up through them in company 
irith one around whom all the hosts of heaven were bowing down, as 
he passed on to take his place beside the Father on his everlasting 
throne. Humblest believer in the Saviour, a like marvellous contrast 
is in store for you. This hour, it may be, weak and burdened, toss- 
ing on the bed of agony, in that darkened chamber of stifled sobs 
and drooping tears ; the next hour, up and away in the paradise of 
God, mingling with the spirits of the just made perfect, renewing 
death-broken friendships, gazing on the unveiled glories of the Lamb. 
Be thou then but faithful unto death ; struggle on for a few more of 
those numbered days, or months, or years, and on that day of your 
departure hence, in his name I have to say it to you, Verily, thou 
too shalt be with him in paradise. 



IX. 

The Mother of our Lord.* 

The last sight we got of the disciple whom Jesus loved was when 
he and Peter entered together into the hall of the high priest. Silent 
and in the shade, he escaped the scrutiny that his rash companion 
drew upon himself. Of the sad scene that ensued, John was the sor- 
rowful witness. He saw the Lord turn and look upon Peter ; he saw 
Peter turn and leave the hall. It is not likely that he followed him. 
A stronger attraction kept him where he was. He waited to see 
what the issue of these strange proceedings should be ; waited till he 
heard the judgment of the Sanhedrim given ; waited till he saw the 
weak and sorely-badgered governor at last give way ; waited perhaps 
till the preparations for the crucifixion had commenced. Then may 
he have gone in haste into the city ; gone to seek out those who, he 
knew, would be most interested to hear ; especially to seek out and 
to comfort her upon whose wounded heart the burden of these terri- 
ble tidings would fall most heavily. Most likely it was from the lips 
of the beloved disciple that Mary first heard that morning of the fate 
which awaited Jesus. But where and when did she first see him ? 

* John 19 • 25-27. 



724 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

Not in the palace of the high priest; not in the judgment-hall of 
Pilate. Although she had got the tidings soon enough to be there, 
these were not places for such a visitant. Nor was she one of those 
daughters of Jerusalem that lamented and bewailed him by the way. 
The first sight she gets of him is when, mocked by the soldiers, deri- 
ded by the passers-by, insulted by the chief priests, he hangs upon 
the cross. She has her own sister Mary with her, and that other 
faithful Mary of Magdala, with John beside them, making up that 
little group, who, with feelings so different from those of all the oth- 
ers, gaze upon the scene. 

The prayer for his crucifiers has been offered. The penitent thief 
has heard the declaration that opens to him that day the gates of 
paradise, when the eye of the Crucified, wandering over the motley 
crowd, fixes upon that little group standing, quietly but sadly, near 
enough to be spoken to. John is addressing some word, or doing 
some act of kindness to Mary. They are at least so close to one 
another, that though Jesus names neither, neither can mistake of 
whom and to whom he speaks, as, bending a tender look upon them, 
he says, " Woman, behold thy son !" " Son, behold thy mother !" 
John acts at once on the direction given, and withdraws Mary from 
the spot, and takes her to his own home in Jerusalem. Amid the 
dark and tumultuous, solemn and awful incidents of the crucifixion, 
this incident has so much of peaceful repose that we feel tempted to 
dwell upon it. At once, and very naturally, it suggests to us a review 
of the previous relationship and intercourse between Mary and her 
mysterious Son. We cannot, indeed, rightly appreciate our Lord's 
notice of her from the cross without taking it in connection with that 
relationship and intercourse. 

The angelic annunciation, the salutation of Elisabeth, the visits 
of the Bethlehem shepherds and the Eastern magi, had all prepared 
Mary to see, in her first-born Son, One greater than the children of 
men. All those sayings — about his greatness and glory, his being 
called the Son of the Highest, his sitting upon the throne of David 
his father, his reigning over the house of Jacob for ever — she kept 
and pondered in her heart, wondering exceedingly what manner of 
man that child of hers should be, in whom those sayings should be 
fulfilled. As she listened to all those prophecies of his future great- 
ness, by which his birth was foretold and celebrated, what bright and 
glowing anticipations must have filled Mary's heart ! One discord- 
ant word alone at this time fell upon her ear, one saying differing 
from all the rest, the meaning of which she could not understand. 
"This child," said the aged Simeon, as he took up the babe into his 



THE MOTHEE OF OUB LORD. 725 

arms at his presentation within the temple — " this child is set for the 
fall and rising again of many in Israel, and for a sign that shall be 
spoken against." " Yea," added the aged prophet, as he looked sadly 
and sympathizingly at Mary, "a sword shall pierce through thine 
own soul also." Was it to temper her new-born joy; was it to teach 
\ex to mingle some apprehension with her hopes ; was it to prepare 
and fortify her for the actual future that lay before her — so different 
from the imagined one — that these words were spoken? Beyond 
exciting a fresh wonder and perplexity, ihey could, however, have 
had but little effect on Mary at the time. She did not, she could not 
understand them then ; therefore, with those bright and joyous anti- 
cipations still within her heart, she retired to Nazareth. The child 
grew, the evangelist tells us, waxed strong in spirit, was filled with 
wisdom, the grace of God was upon him; but beyond that gentleness 
which nothing could ruffle, that meekness which nothing could pro- 
voke, that wisdom which was daily deepening and widening, giving 
ever new and more wonderful, yet ever natural and child-like exhibi- 
tions of itself, that dutiful submission to his reputed parents, that 
love to all around him upon earth, that deeper love to his Father in 
heaven — beyond that rare and unexampled assemblage of all the vir- 
tues and graces by which a human childhood could be adorned, there 
was nothing outwardly to distinguish him from any child of his own 
age, nothing outwardly to mark him out as the heir of such a glori- 
ous destiny. 

Twelve years of that childhood pass. Jesus has been to Mary so 
like what any other son might have been to his mother, that, uncon- 
scious of any difference, she assumes and exercises over him all ordi- 
nary maternal rights. But now, again, just as it was with that speech 
of Simeon among the other prophecies that heralded the Kedeemer's 
birth, so is it with an act and speech of Christ himself among the 
quiet incidents out of which, for thirty years, his life at Nazareth was 
made up. When twelve years old, they take Jesus up to Jerusalem, 
the days of the festival are fulfilled, the village company to which 
Jesus and his family were attached, leave the holy city on their 
return. Joseph and Mary never for a moment doubt that, acting 
with his accustomed wisdom and dutifulness, their son will be with 
the other youths from Nazareth and its neighborhood, along with 
whom he had made the journey up to the holy city. Not till the 
usual resting-place for the night is reached do they miss him. Some- 
thing must have happened to hinder him from joining the company 
at Jerusalem. Full of anxiety, Joseph and Mary return into the city. 
Three days are spent in the sorrowful search. At last they find him, 



726 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Bitting quietly among the doctors, as if the temple were Lis home. 
Imagine Mary's feelings at this sight. No accident, then, had hap- 
pened to him; no restraint had been laid upon him. It had been 
voluntarily and deliberately that her son had remained thus behind 
for four days after her departure. Never before had Jesus acted in 
such a way, never said or done anything fitted to give her pain. 
Never before had she occasion to reproach or rebuke him ; but now, 
in her surprise and grief, she cannot help speaking to him as she had 
never done before. " Son," said she, when at last she found him — 
" Son, why hast thou dealt thus with us ? Thy father and I have 
sought thee sorrowing." Now mark the Son's reply when spoken to 
as if he had been forgetful of the duty that a child owes to his pa- 
rents. Mary had called him Son ; he does not call her mother ; he 
never does — never in any conversation related in the gospels. Mary 
had spoken of Joseph as his father ; he nowise recognizes that rela- 
tionship. The full consciousness of another, higher Sonship than 
that to Mary has entered his youthful heart ; and, under the inspira- 
tion of this consciousness, his only reply to the maternal appeal is, 
" How is it that ye sought me ? wist ye not that I must be about my 
Father's business ?" — a very strange and altogether unexpected an- 
swer; one which, we are distinctly told, neither Mary nor Joseph 
understood. It offered no explanation or excuse for his conduct. 
It denied all need for any such explanation or excuse. In the matter 
of his heavenly Father's business, it repudiated their interference. 
Mary had never heard her own or Joseph's authority over him ques- 
tioned by Jesus. Had this visit to Jerusalem weakened in his heart 
the sense of subjection to them? Was he going to throw it off? 
Will he refuse to accompany them? Must he still continue to be 
thus engaged about his Father's business ? No ! Having said thus 
much, to teach them that he knew how special his earthly relation- 
ship to them was, he rose, he left the temple, and returning with 
them to Nazareth, was subject to them as before, yet not without 
having deposited another seed of wonder in Mary's heart — wonder 
as to what that other Father's business was, with her son's mode of 
doing which she, as his mother, must not interfere. 

Jesus is, as before, Mary's dutiful and submissive son. Joseph 
dies, and he, who had been sharer of his reputed father's earthly 
labors, becomes perhaps the chief support and solace of his mothei 
in her widowhood. Eighteen years go past. Jesus leaves his home 
at Nazareth, alone, for none of his own family believe in him. He 
presents himself on the banks of the Jordan, and asks baptism at 
the hands of John. The sign from heaven is given; the voice from 



THE MOTHER OF OUR LORD. 727 

heaven is heard; the Baptist points to him as the Lamb of God. 
Philip hails him as the Messiah promised to the fathers. Nathanael 
recognises him as the Son of God, the King of Israel. All this is 
told to Mary. A few weeks later her son returns, and finds her at 
the marriage-feast at Cana ; returns now with the public vouchers of 
his Messiahship, and with five followers, who acknowledge him as 
their Master. Once more, as at his birth, the hopes of Mary's heart 
rise high. It is at the house of a friend — of a near relative, it has 
been conjectured — that this marriage-feast is held. The guests, 
swelled by Christ's disciples, are more numerous than had been 
anticipated. The wine provided fails. If her son be indeed that 
great prophet who is to appear, might he not take this public oppor- 
tunity of partially, at least, revealing himself? Might he not inter- 
fere to shield the family from discredit? Might he not, with the 
wine that still remained, do something like to what Elijah had don© 
with the cruse of oil and the barrel of meal? Filled with such 
hopes, she calls his attention to the deficiency, trusting that he may 
possibly, in his new character and office, remove it. " She saith to 
him, They have no wine. Jesus saith to her, Woman, what have I 
to do with thee? [or, what hast thou to do with me?] mine hour is 
not yet come." Soften it as we may, relieve it from all that may 
seem disrespectful, there was discouragement and reproof in this 
reply. Presuming upon her motherly relationship, on the privileges 
that her thirty years of maternal control have given her, Mary ven- 
tures to suggest, and she does it in the most delicate manner, what 
his course of action might be, now that he enters upon the public 
walk of the great Prophet. Upon all such interference on her part, 
an instant, gentle, but firm check must be imposed. Mary must be 
taught the limits of that influence and authority which her earthly 
relationship to him had hitherto permitted her to exercise. She 
must be taught that in the new and higher path upon which he was 
now about to enter, that motherly relationship gave her no place nor 
right to direct or to control. 

Mary felt and acted upon the reproof. She never afterwards, at 
least that we know of, in any way obtruded herself. In the history 
of our Lord's three years' ministry, she never once appears in direct 
intercourse with her son. She may sometimes have been with him 
in his many circuits of Galilee, but you will search in vain for her 
name among the women who accompanied him, and who ministered 
to him. Between the words spoken to her at Cana, and those 
addressed to her from the cross, not another word, addressed by 
Jesus to his mother, is recorded in the gospels. True, indeed, h* 



728 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

speaks of her; and in such instances what was said seems to have 
been intended to moderate in the minds of his hearers their estimate 
of her position, as his mother. Prom the outskirts of a crowd that 
had gathered round him as he taught, the message was once sent in 
to him, "Behold, thy mother and thy brothers stand without, desi- 
ring to speak with thee." What they wanted with him, we do not 
know: it was on no friendly errand that his brothers came; they 
disliked his public preaching on the hillsides to the multitude ; they 
thought him beside himself. They expected, on this occasion, that 
so soon as he got their message, he would give up the work in which 
he was engaged, and come to them — that he would feel that his 
mother and they had a claim upon his attention, superior to that of 
the motley company that was pressing in upon him. It was a case 
in many respects like that in the temple, of a competition between 
two kinds or classes of obligations. Very striking was the way in 
which Jesus in this instance acted. As soon as he heard the mes- 
sage, he exclaimed, "Who is my mother or my brethren?" Then, 
looking around, he stretches forth his hands to his disciples, (and it 
is but rarely that any gesture of our Lord is chronicled in the gospel 
story,) and said, "Behold my mother and my brethren; for whoso 
ever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is 
my brother, and sister, and mother." Another time, as he was 
speaking with great power and effect, one of his hearers, struck with 
admiration, broke forth with the exclamation, "Blessed is the womb 
that bare thee, and the paps that gave thee suck!" "Tea," said 
Jesus, checking instantly and emphatically that spirit which had 
prompted the exclamation — "yea, rather blessed is he that heareth 
the word of God, and doeth it." 

Mary was highly favored. With Gabriel and with all generations 
of our race, we are prepared to call her blessed. We are prepared 
to render all due honor to that relationship in which she stood to 
the Redeemer of mankind. Among all the earthly distinctions a3>d 
dignities that could have been bestowed upon a woman, the ve'cy 
greatest, we believe, was that which was thus conferred on Mary. 
And to the reverential regard which this relationship demands, we 
are prepared to add the still higher regard due to her genuine 
modesty, her simple faith. Nor are we sure but that, in the depth 
of our recoil from the superstitious reverence that has gathered 
round her name, we have overlooked and failed to do full justice 
to the simplicity, the beauty, the retiringness of that piety which 
makes her among the pious women of the gospels what John was 
among the apostles of our Lord. But when asked to worship her, 



THE MOTHER OF OUR LORD. 72 ( J 

to pray to lier as tlie mother of the Lord, to entreat that she will 
exert her influence with her Divine Son, is it possible to overlook 
that Treatment which she met with at our Lord's own hands when 
here upon earth; is it possible to put away from us the thought that, 
in that very treatment, he was prophetically uttering his own solemn 
protest against any such idolatrous magnifying of the position and 
relationship in which it pleased God that she should stand to him ? 
We say this in the spirit of no mere ecclesiastical quarrel with the 
worship of the virgin. We know how soon paganism mingled its 
superstitions with the simple worship of the Crucified ; and we can 
well, therefore, understand how, in virtue of all the gentle and sacred 
associations that linked themselves with her name, her character, 
her peculiar connection with Jesus, Mary should have come to be 
regarded with an idolatrous regard. Nay, further, looking back 
upon those dark ages when, under the grinding tread of Northern 
barbarism, the civilization of Southern Europe was well-nigh obliter- 
ated, we can see a beauty, a tenderness, a power in the worship of 
Mary ; in the prayers and the hymns addressed to her, which turned 
them into a softening and civilizing element. Nay, further still, were 
we asked, among all the idolatries that have prevailed upon this idol- 
loving, idol-worshipping world of ours, to say which one of them it 
was that touched the finest chords of the human heart, awoke the 
purest and tenderest emotions, had the best and most humanizing 
effect, we do not know but that we should fix upon this worship of 
the virgin. But delivered, as we have been, from the bondage of the 
middle-age superstitions; with that narrative in our hands which 
tells us how our Lord himself dealt with Mary; standing as we do, 
or ought to do, in the full light of that great truth, that "there ie 
one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ 
Jesus" — it cannot but be matter of surprise, that this worship of the 
virgin should still prevail in so many of the enlightened countries ol 
Christendom; suggesting the reflection, how slowly it is that the 
human spirit emancipates itself from any natural, long-continued, 
and fondly cherished superstition. 

Keeping now the whole history of Mary's previous connection 
with our Lord before our eye, and especially their intercourse during 
the three years of his public ministry, let us dwell for a moment or 
two upon Christ's recognition of her from the cross. This affec- 
tionate recognition in his dying agonies, must have been peculiarly 
grateful to Mary. His departure from Nazareth, to which he seems 
to have paid only one short visit afterwards; his separation from 
the members of his own family; his engrossment with the great 



730 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

objects of his public life ; the checks he had imposed upon hei 
interference; the manner in which he had publicly spoken of her; 
all these must have created something like a feeling of estrangement 
in Mary's breast, as if he had ceased to be to her all that he once 
was. How pleasing to her then to learn from that look and speech 
yt kindness, that his love for her remained unchanged. How sooth- 
ing to her motherly affection to receive this last, this parting token 
of his undying affection for her ! She may banish all her fears, bury 
all her suspicions ; that Son of hers, he loves her still, loves her as 
he had ever done ; he cannot die without assuring her of that love. 
But it is more than a simple expression of affection that comes here 
from the Redeemer's lips. There is a thoughtful care for Mary's 
future earthly comfort, the securing for her the attention of another 
son, the providing for her the shelter of a new home. The dying 
Jesus has presented to his thoughts the bereaved, the desolate con- 
dition in which his death will leave his mother ; he will make all the 
provision he can towards alleviating her distress; silver and gold he 
has none to give her, but he has what silver and gold could never 
buy — a hold and power over the heart of one who, if he be well 
described as the disciple whom Jesus loved, might almost as aptly 
be described as the disciple who loved Jesus. That hold he will 
now exercise on her behalf. "Woman, behold thy son!" Woman, 
not mother: he might, upon this occasion, have restrained himself 
from calling her so, lest the very mention of her relationship to him 
should mark her out to that unfriendly crowd, and expose her to 
their ill-treatment. He is but repeating, however, on the cross, the 
address of the marriage-feast — "Woman, behold thy son!" Mary, 
perhaps up to that moment, had cherished some hope of his deliver- 
ance ; but at that word this hope gives way ; she is to lose him ; he 
is to be her son no more ; that tie is to be broken, and a new one 
created in its stead. A better, kinder son than John, Jesus could 
not have provided ; but, alas ! Mary feels that he can never fill that 
Son's place; still there is great kindness in selecting such a sub- 
stitute. 

To John, no name, no epithet is applied ; Jesus simply looks at 
him, and says, "Behold thy mother!" John had already been kind 
to Mary, was at that moment doing what he could to comfort her, 
would have cared for her, though no special charge of this kind had 
been given ; but a son's place, that son's place, he could not have 
felt warranted to assume. Now, however, when Jesus with his dying 
breath calls upon him to occupy it, he counts it as a high honor con- 
ferred upon him. He undertakes the trust, and proceeds tc execute 






THE MOTHER OF OUR LORD. 731 

it in the promptest and most delicate way. Was lie bnt interpreting 
aright the look that Jesus gave him, or was he only obeying an 
impulse of thoughtful, son-like affection in his own breast? How- 
ever it was, he saw that Mary's strength was failing, that she was 
unfit for the closing scene; he instantly led her away to his own 
home in the city. She was not at the cross when the darkness 
descended; she was not there when the last and bitterest agonies 
were borne. You search for her in vain among the women who 
stood afar off beholding to the last. By John's kind act of instant 
withdrawal, she was saved what she might not have had strength to 
bear; and though that withdrawal was neither prescribed nor sug- 
gested by our Lord himself, one can well imagine with what a grate- 
ful look he would follow that son as he discharged this the first 
office of his new relationship; how pleased he too would be that a 
mother's heart was spared the pangs of witnessing that suffering 
which drew from him the cry, "My God! my God! why hast thou 
forsaken me ?" Mary showed the submissiveness of her disposition 
in yielding to John's suggestion, and retiring from the cross, and 
you never see her but once again in the gospel narrative. Neither 
at the resurrection nor at the ascension, nor during the forty days 
that intervened between them, is her name mentioned, or does she 
appear. The one and only glance we get of her is in the first chap- 
ter of the Acts of the Apostles, where her name and that of our 
Lord's brother, who had come then to believe on him, are mentioned 
among the hundred and twenty who, after the ascension, continued 
in prayer and supplication, waiting for the promise of the Spirit. 

And now, in conclusion, in that love which in his latest hoars 
Jesus showed to Mary, let us hail the great and perfect example of 
filial affection he has left behind him. In that mingling with the 
broader thoughts of a world's redemption which must then have 
occupied his thoughts, the thoughtful care for her earthly comfort, 
let us see the evidence of how essential a part of all true religion it 
is to provide, as God enables us, for those whom we leave behind us 
in this world. Let no pretext of other and higher obligations 
weaken within our breasts the sense of our obligation to discharge 
this duty before we die. 

From our Saviour's treatment of Mary let us learn, too, to put in 
their right place, to estimate according to their real worth, all earth- 
ly, all external distinctions. To be the mother of our Lord, that 
raised her above all other women, and we gladly join with all who, 
upon that ground, would call her blessed ; yet would we still more 
wish to join heart and soul in our Lord's own saying, that '• more 



732 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

blessed is he that heareth the word of God, and doeth it." To be the 
nearest herald, the immediate harbinger of Jesus, that raised John 
the Baptist above all the prophets, and ranked him among the great- 
est of blie children of men. But yet there is another connection with 
Christ, higher and still more honorable — a connection in comparison 
fcith which the closest of mere external or official bonds sink into 
absolute insignificance — that inward, that spiritual, that eternal tie 
which binds the humble, contrite, trustful spirit to the Redeemer. 
To be the least in his kingdom, to be the least among those who 
truly love and faithfully obey him, is a more enduring, a more illus- 
trious distinction than to be the highest among those upon whom the 
honors of this world are heaped. And let us bless God for it, that 
this, the highest honor to which humanity can be exalted, is one that 
is within the reach of all. It cometh through humility and faith and 
love : it cometh through the weight of our sin being felt, the worth 
of our Redeemer being appreciated. It cometh through our becom- 
ing as little children, and yielding ourselves up to those gracious in- 
fluences of the Divine Spirit, by which alone the prond heart can be 
humbled, and the doubtful heart be assured, and the unloving heart 
be brought to love. It cometh through the eye of faith being open- 
ed to discern the closeness and the reality of the unseen world, that 
world of spirits, whose all-engulfing bosom, when a few more of these, 
numbered years of ours on earth are over, shall have received us all. 
It cometh from our giving to all that concerns our spiritual state, 
our spiritual welfare and preparation for futurity, that predominance 
in our regards, our affections, our lives, to which their inherent, thei> 
surpassing worth, entitles them. It springs from our caring less foi 
the honor that cometh from man, and more for that honor which 
cometh from God only. 

Finally, let us realize those relationships to one another estab- 
lished in Christ our Lord, which, in their closeness, their blessedness, 
their enduringness, so far outmeasure all the other relationships ol 
this human life. Why was John selected to take Christ's place, to 
be a second son to Mary ? Why was Mary so specially committed 
to his charge ? She had other sons, upon whom the duty naturally 
devolved. They, indeed, as yet were unbelievers; and upon that 
ground might fitly have been excluded. But were there not two of 
her own sister's sons among the twelve ? Why pass the sister and 
the nephews over, and select John to stand to her in this new rela- 
tionship ? It may have been that John was better placed than they, 
as to outward circumstances abler to provide a home for the bereaved; 
but can we doubt that another and still weightier consideration de- 



THE DARKNESS AND THE DESERTION. 733 

fcermined the Saviour's choice — the spiritual affinity between John 
and Mary; his capacity to enter into all her sorrows; his power by 
sympathy to support? And ties kindred to those which bound John 
and Mary together, do they not still bind together those whose hearts 
have been taught to beat in unison, and who have been formed to be 
mutual helps and comforts amid the trials and bereavements of life? 
Thank God for it, if he has given you any such support as Mary and 
John found in each other ; and rejoice in the belief, that those rela- 
tionships which are grounded on and spring out of our oneness in 
Jesus Christ, partake not of the mutability of this earthly scene, 
but, destined to outlive it, are impressed with the seal of eternity. 



The Darkness and the Desertion.* 

The full bright sun of an eastern sky has been looking down ok 
what these men are doing who have nailed Jesus to the cross, and 
are standing mocking and gibing him. The mid-day hour has come ? 
when suddenly there falls a darkness which swallows up the light, 
and hangs a funereal pall around the cross : no darkness of an 
eclipse — that could not be as the moon then stood — no darkness 
which any natural cause whatever can account for. As we think of 
it, many questions rise to which no answer can now be given. Did 
it come slowly on, deepening and deepening till it reached its point 
of thickest gloom? or was it, as we incline to believe, as instanta- 
neous in its entrance as its exit : at the sixth hour, covering all in a 
moment with its dark mantle; at the ninth hour, in a moment lifting 
that mantle off? Was it total or partial : a darkness deep as thai 
of moonless, starless midnight, wrapping the cross so thickly round, 
that not the man who stood the nearest to it could see aught of the 
sufferer? Or was it the darkness of a hazy twilight obscuring but 
not wholly concealing, which left the upraised form of the Eedeemer 
dimly visible through the gloom ? Was it local and limited, confined 
to Jerusalem or Judea; or did it spread over the entire enlightened 
portion of the globe ? We cannot tell. We may say of it, and say 
truly, that it was inanimate nature, supplying, in her mute elements, 
that sympathy with her suffering Lord which was denied by man. 

* Mark IS 1 33, M. 



734 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

Men gazed rudely on the sight, but the sun refused to look on it, 
hiding his face for a season. Men would leave the Crucified, exposed 
in shame and nakedness, to die; but an unseen hand was stretched 
forth to draw the drapery of darkness around the sufferer, and hide 
bim from vulgar gaze. 

But the truest and deepest significance of this darkness is as a type 
or emblem of the horror of that great darkness which at this period 
enveloped the spirit of the Redeemer. The outer incidents, if there 
were any, of those three hours of darkness, remain untold. We are left 
only to believe that its sudden descent wrought like a spell upon the 
actors and spectators ; it stopped each wagging head, it silenced each 
gibing tongue ; not a word seems to have been spoken, not a thing 
done ; there they stood, or there they lay, with that spell upon them, 
wondering what this darkness meant. We can easily enough im- 
agine what they may have fancied or felt during that strange period 
of suspense ; but who can imagine what he was thinking, how he, the 
Saviour, was feeling in that dread and awful interval ? No eye per- 
haps may have pierced the outer darkness that shrouded his suffer- 
ing body ; still less may any human eye penetrate that deeper dark- 
ness which shrouded his suffering soul. We are left here without a 
single external index ; not a look, a word, an act, to tell us what was 
going on within the Redeemer's spirit — till the ninth hour came, the 
moment which preceded the rolling away of the darkness, and the 
return of the clear shining of the day, and then the only sound that 
strikes the ear is the agonizing cry, " My God, my God ! why hast 
thou forsaken me?" a cry wrung, as it were, from the sufferer's lips, 
when the severe agony of the soul has reached its last, its culmina- 
ting, its closing point ; a cry which, revealing somewhat of the inte- 
rior of the burdened heart from which it springs, leaves still more 
unrevealed ; a cry which, after we have listened to it, and pondered 
it, and turned it over and over again in our thoughts, seems to grow 
darker instead of brighter to our eye, and of which we become at 
last convinced that it was the simple, spontaneous, irrepressible out- 
cry of a spirit tried to the last limit of endurance ; the expression of 
what must for ever remain to us an indescribable, unfathomable, 
unimaginable woe. 

It would strip, indeed, this cry of the suffering Saviour of all dif- 
ficulty and mystery, could we look upon him as a man, and nothing 
more ; could we look upon him in dying as subject to the same mental 
and spiritual, as well as bodily weakness with any of ourselves; 
could we believe that such doubts and fears as have eclipsed the 
faith, and darkened for a time the hopes of other dying men, had 



THE DAEKNESS AND THE DESERTION. 735 

place within his breast; could we interpret this saying as the utter- 
ance of a momentary despondency, a transient despair. We are 
disposed to go the utmost length in attributing to the humanity of 
our Lord all the sinless frailties of our nature; and had we seen him 
struggling in agony through the tedious death-throes of dissolution^ 
the sinking body drawing the sinking spirit down along with it, and 
draining it of all its strength — had it been from a spirit enfeebled to 
the uttermost, its very powers of thought and apprehension, of faith 
and feeling, fainting, failing, that this sad lament proceeded, we can 
scarcely tell whether or not it would have been inconsistent with a 
right estimate of the humanity of Jesus to attribute to him such a 
momentary oppression under doubt and fear as should have forced 
this exclamation from his lips, prompted by his obscured perception 
of his personal relationship with the Father. 

It stands, however, in the way of our receiving any such interpre- 
tation of this saying, that it came from one whose intellect was so 
clear and unclouded that the moment after it was uttered he could 
reflect on all he had to say or do in order that the Scripture might 
be fulfilled, and whose bodily powers were so far from being reduced 
to the last extremity of weakness, that it was " with a loud voice," 
betokening a vigor as yet unexhausted, that he uttered the despair- 
ing cry. 

Besides, we have only to look back upon the few days that pre- 
ceded the crucifixion, to find evidence that there mingled with the 
sufferings which Christ endured upon the cross an element altogether 
different from the common pains of dying. On one of the last days 
of his teaching in the temple, certain Greeks desired to see him. 
Their earnest request sounded to his prophetic ear like the entreaty 
of the entire Gentile world. It threw him into a sublime reverie of 
thought. Bright visions of a distant future, when all men should be 
drawn unto him, rose before his eye ; but with them the vision of a 
future even then at hand — of his being lifted up upon the cross. A 
sudden change comes over his spirit. He ceases to think of, to 
speak with man. His eye closes upon the crowd that stand around. 
He is alone with the Father. A dark cloud wraps his spirit. He 
fears as he enters it. From the bosom of the darkness there comes 
an agitated voice: "Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? 
Father, save me from this hour! but for this cause came I unto this 
hour. Father glorify thy name !" — some deep, inward trouble of the 
heart, a shrinking from it, a cry for deliverance, a meek submission 
to the Divine will. You have all these repeated in order, and with 
greater intensity in the garden of Gethsemane : " My soul is exceed- 



736 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

ing sorrowful, even unto death. O my Father, if it be possilde, let 
this cup pass from me : nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." 
Here, once more, there is the agony, the shrinking, the petition, the 
acquiescence. 

What so troubled Jesus in the temple? what threw him into that 
bloody sweat in the garden? what drew from him those strong cry- 
ings for deliverance? Can any one believe that it was the mere 
prospect of dying upon a cross which thus shook his spirit to the 
very centre? To believe so, were to degrade him beneath a level to 
which multitudes of his followers have risen. Deaths far more for- 
midable, more protracted, more excruciating, they have contemplated 
beforehand with unruffled composure, and endured with unshrinking 
fortitude. Shall the disciple be greater than the master? No; there 
was something more in that hour for which Jesus came into this 
world, something more in that cup which he took into his trembling 
hands, than the mere bitterness of apprehended dissolution. He has 
himself taught us, by the language which he employed, to identify 
the hour and the cup. He has taught us, too, that this hour was on 
on him in the temple; this cup was there raised by him to his lips. 
The same hour was on him in the garden ; of the same cup he there 
drank large and bitter draughts. It was that same hour which came 
upon him on the cross, to run out its course during the supernatural 
darkness; it was that same cup which he took once more into his 
hands, to drain to the very dregs. Here also, as in the temple, in 
the garden, you have the same features — the conflict, the recoil, the 
victory. Perhaps the inward trouble and agony of his soul reached 
a somewhat higher pitch on Calvary than in Gethsemane : that bitter 
cry, " My God, my God ! why hast thou forsaken me ?" sounds to 
our ear as coming from a profounder depth of woe than any into 
which Jesus had ever sunk before ; but in source and in character 
the sorrow of the Saviour's spirit was in each of the three instances 
the same — a purely mental or spiritual grief, unconnected in two of 
these cases with any bodily endurance, and, in the third, carefully 
to be distinguished from those pains of dissolution with which it 
mingled. 

Whence did that grief arise ? what were its elements ? how came 
it to be so accumulated and condensed, and to exert such a pressure 
upon the spirit of our Redeemer, as to force from him those prayers 
in the garden, this exclamation on the cross ? It was because he stood 
as our great Head and Representative, and suffered in our room and 
stead: "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for 
our iniquities;" he "made his soul an offering for sin;" "he died the 



THE DARKNESS AND THE DESERTION. 737 

just for the unjust, to bring us to God." The testimony of the Scrip- 
tures to the vicarious, sacrificial, atoning character of the sufferings 
and death of Christ, is clear, emphatic, multiform, and unambiguous. 
But when we go beyond the simple statements of the inspired record, 
and, admitting the great fact of the atonement, inquire into the ho^ 
and the wherefore of that fact — resolved to accept implicitly all that 
the Scriptures teach, but equally resolved not to go beyond its teach- 
ing, nor add any theories of our owu to its simple and impressive 
lessons — we feel ourselves on the borders of a region too remote, too 
mysterious for eyes like ours fully and accurately to survey. 

Let us, however, that we may catch a distant sight of one inner 
fountain of our Bedeemer's sufferings, approach it by a path which, 
for some distance at least, is not obscure. It is said in Scripture 
that Christ bore our sins in his own body on the tree; it is said, also, 
that he bore our griefs, and carried our sorrows. Our griefs he bore 
by sympathy ; our sorrows he carried by entering into them f*nd ma- 
king them his own. That central heart of love and pity opened itself 
at every point to all the forms and varieties of human woe. Its sym- 
pathy stood free from all those restraints that lie upon ours. Our 
ignorance, our selfishness, our coldness, our incapacity for more than 
a few intense affections, narrow and weaken the sympathy we feel. 
But he knows all, can feel for all; so that not a pang of grief wrings 
any human bosom but sends an answering thrill through the loving, 
pitying heart of our Divine Bedeemer. Human sympathy, too, deep- 
ens, takes a peculiar character, a peculiar tenderness, according to 
the closeness and dearness of the tie which binds us to the sufferer. 
A mother's fellow-feeling with a suffering child is something very dif- 
ferent from what any stranger can experience. And it is not i dm ply 
as one of us, as a brother man, that Jesus feels for us in our sorrows. 
It is as one who has linked himself to our race, or rather has linked 
our race to him by a tie the nature and force of which we are little 
capable of understanding. Only we may say, that parent was never 
bound to child, nor child to parent, in a bond so close as that which 
binds Jesus Christ and those whom he came to redeem. It would 
need his own omniscience to fathom the depth and intensity impart- 
ed to his sympathy by the peculiarity of that relationship in which it 
has pleased him to place himself to his own. 

Now, Christ's is as much the central conscience as the central 
heart of humanity. Conceive him entering into a connection with 
human sin, kindred to that into which he enters with human sorrow, 
realizing to himself, as he only could, its extent, its inveteracy, its 
malignity : in this way taking on him all our sins, and letting the fuU 

jttfe of Christ. 47 



788 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

impression of their inherent turpitude, their ruinous results, fall upon 
his spirit — who shall calculate for us the bulk and weight of that bur- 
den which might thus come to be borne by him ? Once, in a Jewish 
synagogue, he looked round upon a small company of men, and he 
was grieved because of the hardness of their hearts. Let us imagine 
that grief amplified and intensified to the uttermost by our Lord's 
taking upon himself the sin of the world. Let all the hardness of all 
men's hearts, all the hard speeches that ungodly sinners have spoken, 
the ungodly deeds they have done ; let all the impurity, and injustice, 
and cruelty, and profanity, and impiety which have been perpetrated 
under these heavens — of which the enmity and malignity which nailed 
him to the cross might be taken as a specimen and index ; let all thai 
vast accumulation of human iniquity be conceived of as present to 
the Redeemer's thoughts, appropriated and realized by him as the 
iniquity of those to whom he had linked himself by a bond of closest 
fellowship, of undying, unquenchable love; let all the sins of thai 
world he came to save gather in and press down upon the pure and 
holy and loving spirit of the man Christ Jesus : do we not get a dim 
and distant sight of a fountain of woe thus opened within, sufficient 
to send forth waters of bitterness which might well nigh overwhelm 
his soul, putting his capacity to suffer to an extreme trial ? 

Further still, may we not imagine that as he made thus the sins 
of our sinful world his own, and thought and dwelt upon that holi- 
ness of God, upon which they were such terrible invasions ; the wrath 
of the Holy One, which they had so thoroughly deserved, and so 
deeply had provoked ; the separation from God, the banishment from 
his presence, the death they did so righteously entail; that, in the 
very fulness of that love and sympathy which made him identify 
himself with us men for our salvation, the horror of such a darkness 
settled over the mind of the Redeemer, that the face even of his 
heavenly Father for a moment seemed obscured, that its smile seemed 
changed into a frown, that the momentary apprehension seized him 
that in himself that death, that separation from the Father, was about 
to be realized, so that from his oppressed, bewildered, faltering man- 
hood there came forth the cry, " My God, my God ! why hast thou 
forsaken me ?" 

Let us not forget that there was not, indeed could not be — the 
nature of the connection forbade it — any absolute or entire desertion 
of the Son by the Father. " Therefore," said Jesus, "doth my Father 
love me, because I lay down my life for the sheep." Could that love 
be withdrawn from Jesus when he was in the very act of laying down 
bis life ? " This," said the Father, " is my beloved Son, in whom I 









THE DARKNESS AND THE DESERTION. 739 

am well pleased." Was there ever a time at which he was more 
pleased with him than when he was offering himself up in that sac- 
rifice so acceptable to God : Nor does the Son ever entirely lose his 
hold of the Father. Even in this moment of amazement and oppres- 
sion it is still to God, as Ms God, that he speaks: u Mij God, my 
God. ! why hast thou forsaken me ?" It was the sensible comfort only 
of the Divine presence and favor which were for the time withdrawn ; 
the felt inflowings of the Divine love which were for the time checked. 
But what a time of agony must that have been to him who knew, as 
none other could, what it was to bask in the light of his Father's 
countenance ; who felt, as none other could, that his favor indeed was 
life ! On us — so little do we know or feel what it is to be forsaken 
by God— the thought of it, or sense of it, may make but a slight im- 
pression, produce but little heartfelt misery; but to him it was the 
consummation and the concentration of all woe, beyond which there 
was and could be no deeper anguish for the soul. 

I have thus presented to you but a single side, as it were, of that 
sorrow unto death which rent the bosom of the Redeemer, as he was 
offering himself a sacrifice for us upon the cross. Perhaps it is the 
side which lies nearest to us, and is most open to our comprehension. 
Certainly it is one the looking at which believingly is fitted to tell 
powerfully on our consciences and hearts — to make us feel the ex- 
ceeding sinfulness of our sin, and set us hopefully and trustfully to 
struggle with the temptations that beset our path. 

In a household wdiich enjoyed all the benefits of high culture and 
Christian care, one of the children committed a grievous and unex- 
pected fault — he told a falsehood to cover a petty theft ; rebuke and 
punishment w T ere administered, carried farther than they had ever 
been before, but without effect. The offender was not awakened to 
any real or deep sorrow for his offence. The boy's insensibility quite 
overcame his father. Sitting in the same room with his obstinate 
and sullen child, he bent his head upon his hands, and, sobbing, 
burst into a flood of tears. For a moment or two the boy looked on 
in w r onder ; he then crept gradually nearer and nearer to his sobbing 
parent, and at last got upon his father's knees, asking, in a low whis- 
per, why it was that he was weeping so. He was told the reason. 
It wrought like a spell upon his young heart ; the sight of his father 
suffering so bitterly on his account was more than he could bear 
He flung his little arms around his father, and wept along with him. 
That father never needed to correct his child again for any like 
offence. And surely, if, in that great sorrow which overwhelmed the 
spirit of our Redeemer on the cross, there mingled, as one of its 



740 THE LITE OF CHRIST. 

ingredients, a grief like, in origin and character, to that which wrung 
this father's heart, and melted his child to penitence, the sight and 
thought of it ought to exert a kindred power over those for whom 
Jesus died. 

A younger son is guilt)' of a great offence against his father. His 
elder brother, in acting the part of a mediator between the offending 
child and his offended parent, might voluntarily submit to the exact 
and the full punishment which his younger brother had deserved— 
by doing so might turn away the father's wrath, and earn the title tc 
a brother's gratitude. But what if the offender sees his elder brother, 
at the pure and simple impulse of love, melted into a profound and 
heart-breaking grief, yearning over him, weeping over him, taking on 
himself a suffering far more acute than that which the lash of parent- 
al discipline might righteously have inflicted on the offender, would 
not the sight of the pain that his conduct had given one who loved 
him so tenderly, tell most powerfully in the way of quickening him to 
a sense of his wrong-doing? Transfer this to our Elder Brother, the 
Mediator with our offended Father in heaven. The exact punish- 
ment which our sin entails — remorse, despair, the sting of a torturing 
conscience, the felt abiding misery of a soul cut off from the Divine 
favor — Jesus could not literally bear. He has, indeed, borne that for 
us which has satisfied the Divine justice, and been accepted as a full 
and adequate atonement for our transgression ; but may it not have 
been that the suffering in our room and stead, which was accepted 
of the Father, was part of the suffering which our great sin and his 
great love drew down on Mm, who, by linking himself to us by the 
tie of a common humanity, laid a brother's heart open to such a sor- 
row for our sin as none but the Eternal Son of the Father could have 
endured? Surely, in the consideration that it was in such kind of 
suffering with and for our sins that the great Atonement of the cross, 
in a measure at least, consisted, there is one of the most direct and 
powerful appeals — one singularly fitted to touch, to soften, to subdue. 

I am very conscious how little anything which has as yet been 
said is fitted to throw full or satisfactory light upon that most myste- 
rious of all the mysterious sayings of our Lord — the plaintive, lonely, 
loud, and bitter cry which emanated from the cross, which, piercing 
tihe overhanging darkness, was heard with wonder in the heavens. 
It came out of the depth of an anguish that we have no plummet in 
our hand to sound: and we become only the more conscious how 
unfathomable that depth is, by trying it here and there with the line 
of our short-reaching intellect. Instead of hoping to find the bottom 
anywhere, let us pause upon the brink ; adoring, wondering, praising 




'It is Finished !" 



"IT IS FINISHED." 741 

that great love of our most gracious Saviour, which has a height and 
a depth, a length and a breadth in it, surpassing all human, all an- 
gelic measurement : 

" Oh, never, never canst thou know 

What then for thee the Saviour bore, 

The pangs of that mysterious woe 

Which wrung his bosom's inmost core. 

Yes, man for man perchance may brave 

The horrors of the yawning grave ; 

And friend for friend, or son for sire, 

Undaunted and unmoved expire, 

From love, or piety, or pride ; 

But who can die as Jesus died ?" 



XL 

It is Finished,"* 



With the arrival of the ninth hour, the outer darkness cleared 
away, and with it too the horrors of that inner darkness from whose 
troubled bosom the cry at last came forth, " My God, my God ! why 
hast thou forsaken me ?" That mental agony, one of whose ingre- 
dients — perhaps to us the most intelligible — I have endeavored to 
describe, had been endured. The hour for which he came into the 
world has run its course ; the cup which with such a trembling hand 
he had put to shrinking lips, has been drunk to its dregs ; the powers 
of darkness have made on him their last assault, and been repelled ; 
the momentary darkness of his Father's countenance has passed 
away. As the sun of nature dispels the gloom that for these three 
hours had hung around the scene, and sheds once more his illumina- 
ting beams upon the cross; even so the light of an answering inward 
joy comes to cheer in death the spirit of our Redeemer. It is not in 
darkness, whether outward or inward — not in darkness, but in light, 
in full, clear, unclouded light, that Jesus dies. 

The first, however, and immediate effect of the lifting from his 
oppressed and burdened heart that load of inward grief which had 
been laid upon it, was a reviving consciousness of his bodily condi- 
tion, the awakening of the sensation of a burning thirst. Let the 
spirit be thoroughly absorbed by any very strong emotion, and the 
bodily sensations are for the time unfelt or overborne, they fail to 
attract notice; but let the tide of that overwhelming emotion retreat, 

* Matt. 27 : 47-50 ; Mark 15 ■ 35-37 ; Luke 23 : 16 ; John 19 : 28-30. 



742 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

and these sensations once more exert their power. In the shock of 
battle, the excited combatant may receive his death-wound, and be 
unconscious of pain. It is when they lay him down in quiet to die, 
that exhausted nature betrays a sense of suffering. So is it, after a 
manner, here with Christ. His lips scarce feel their parchedness as 
they utter the cry, " My God, my God ! why hast thou forsaken mo ?" 
Too full, too agitated, is the soul within, to be keenly alive to bodily 
sensations. But now that the relief from inward agony has come, 
the cravings of nature return, and first among these the strong desire 
■for something to alleviate the thirst. This thirst, however, so far 
from entirely engrossing his thoughts, serves but to suggest to the 
dying Saviour-^and this shows, as we before remarked, how clear 
and calm and self-possessed he was to the very last — that among all 
the numerous prophecies which had spoken of the time and manner 
of his decease, of his being numbered with transgressors, of the sha- 
king of heads, and the shooting out of tongues, the parting of his 
garments, the casting lots for his vesture, there still was one (see 
Psa. 69) about their giving him in his thirst vinegar to drink, which 
remained to be fulfilled. As being, then, at once the natural expres- 
sion of the feeling of the moment, and the means of bringing about 
the fulfilment of that prophecy, " Jesus said, I thirsty 

In saying so, he made an appeal to the sympathy of his crucifiers, 
in the belief that they would offer him some of that sour wine, or 
vinegar which was the ordinary drink of the Roman soldiers. Did 
Jesus know how that appeal would be met and answered? We can- 
not but believe he did ; and, if so, it stands out as at once the last 
act in point of time, and one of the lowest in point of degree, of that 
humiliation before men to which it pleased him to stoop, that he ad- 
dressed himself as a petitioner to those who treated his petition as 
they did. Let us try to realize what happened around the cross, 
immediately after the departure of the three hours' darkness. One 
might have expected that the natural awe which that darkness had 
undoubtedly inspired ; the moaning cry, as from one deserted, that 
came from the cross, as it was rolling away; the fresh sight of Jesus, 
upon whose pallid features there lingered the traces of his terrible 
agony ; and, last of all, his asking of them to drink — would have con- 
spired to awaken pity, or at least to silence scorn. The coming back, 
however, of the light — relieving, perhaps, a dread they might have 
felt that in the darkness Jesus should escape or be delivered — seems 
to have rekindled that fiendish malignity which now found a last and 
most demoniac way of expressing itself. " Eli ! Eli !" no Jew could 
pos&ibly misunderstand the words, or imagine that they were a call 



"it is finished:"' 743 

V> Elias for help. The Roman soldiers did not know enough about 
Elias to have fallen on any such interpretation. That the words 
were taken up, played upon by the bystanders, and turned into a new 
instrument of mockery, shows to what a fiendish length of heartless, 
pitiless contempt and scorn such passions as those of these scribes 
and Pharisees, if unrestrained, will go. One, indeed, of those around 
the cross appears to have been touched with momentary pity, per- 
haps a Roman soldier, who, when he heard Jesus say, "I thirst," and 
looked upon his pale, parched lips, ran and took a stalk of hyssop. 
From what we know of the size of the plant, this stalk could not have 
been much above two feet long, but it was long enough to reach the 
lips of Jesus, the feet of a person crucified not being ordinarily ele- 
vated more than a foot or two above the ground. This circumstance 
explains to us how close to the crucified the soldiers must have stood; 
how near many of the outstanding crowd may have been ; how natu- 
ral and easy it was for Jesus to speak to Mary and John as he did. 
To that stalk of hyssop the man attached a sponge, and, dipping it 
in the vessel of vinegar, that stood at hand, was putting it to the 
Saviour's lips, when the mocking crowd cried out, " Let be ; let us 
see whether Elias will come to save him." This did not stop him 
from giving Jesus, in his thirst, vinegar to drink. The ancient proph- 
ecy he must unconsciously fulfil; but it did serve to half-extin- 
guish the prompting upon which he had begun to act, and induce 
him to take up into his own lips, and to repeat the current mockery, 
"Let us see whether Elias will come to take him down." 

When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, " It is finished!" It 
does not fall in with the character or purpose of these remarks, in- 
tended to be as purely as possible expository, to take up this mem- 
orable expression of our dying Lord, and use it as a text out of 
which a full exposition of the doctrine of the cross might be derived. 
Rather, as being more in accordance with our present design, let us 
endeavor to conceive of, and to enter into, as far as it is possible, the 
spirit and meaning of the expression as employed by our Lord upon 
the cross. 

First, then, as coming at this time from the Saviour's lips, it 
betokens an inward and deep sensation of relief, repose; relief from 
a heavy burden; repose after a toilsome labor. To the bearing of 
that burden, the endurance of that toil, Jesus had long and anxiously 
looked forward. From that time, if time it may be called, when he 
undertook the high office of the Mediatorship, from the beginning, 
even from everlasting, through the vista of the future, the cross of 
his last agony had risen up before his all-seeing eye, as the object 



744 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 



towards which, notwithstanding the dark shadows cast befoie it, th 
thought of his spirit stretched forward. In what manner and with 
what feeling it was regarded by him in the period which preceded 
his incarnation, it becomes us not to speak, as we have no means of 
judging ; but we can mark how he felt regarding it after he became & 
man. 

In the earlier period of his ministry, Christ practised a strict re- 
serve in speaking of his death. In spite, however, of that self-im- 
posed restraint, broken hints were ever and anon dropping from his 
lips, sounding quite strange and enigmatical in the ears to which 
they were addressed. " I have a baptism," said he to his disciples, 
"to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplish- 
ed !" When, near the end of his ministry, the necessity for reserve 
was removed, Jesus spoke openly about his coming death, and always 
in such a way as to convey the very deepest impression of the pro- 
found interest with which he himself contemplated beforehand that 
great event. So eagerly did he look forward to it, so striking an in- 
fluence had that prospect even upon his outward aspect and move- 
ments, that when, for the last time, he set his face to go up to Jeru- 
salem, and all the things that were to happen to him there came 
rushing into his mind, he "went before" the twelve, as if impatient 
to get forward. They were amazed, we are told, as he did so ; and 
as they followed him, and gazed upon him, they were afraid. The 
reason of this rapid gait and strange expression he revealed, when he 
took them apart by the way, and told them what his thoughts had 
been dwelling on. There was but one occasion on which he could 
freely and intelligibly speak out the sentiments of his heart : it was 
when he stood with Moses and Elias on the mount, and there, even 
when invested with the glories of transfiguration, the decease which 
he was to accomplish at Jerusalem was the one chosen topic of dis- 
course. As the time drew near, still oftener was that great decease 
before his thoughts; still heavier did its impending weight appear to 
press upon his spirit. It was not, it could not be any mere ordinary 
human death that so occupied the thoughts of Jesus Christ. We 
have previously endeavored to make it apparent to you that the 
true, the real sufferings of that death lay in another, far deeper region 
than that to which the ordinary pangs of bodily dissolution belong ; 
and we cannot but. believe that that internal conflict, that inner 
agony of soul, reserved for the last days and hours of our Redeemer's 
life, was broken, as it were, into parts, distributed between the temple, 
the garden, the cross, for the very purpose of making it palpable, even 
to the eye of the ordinary observer, that the sufferings of the Re~ 



; 



"IT IS FINISHED." 746 

deeiner's soul formed, as has been well said, the very soul of his suf- 
ferings. And when those mysterious sufferings, so long looked 
forward to, at last were over, the load borne and lifted off, with what 
a deep inward feeling of relief and repose must Jesus have said, "It 
is finished!" 

Secondly, connecting this expression with what went so imme- 
diately before — our Lord's remembrance of all that was needful to 
be done to him and by him in dying, in order that the Scriptures 
might be fulfilled — it may reasonably be assumed that he meant 
thereby to declare the final close and completion of that long series 
of types and prophecies of his death which crowd the pages of the 
Old Testament Scriptures. In the very number and variety of these 
types and prophecies, another attestation meets our eye to the preemi- 
nent importance of that event to which they point. If you take the 
twenty-four hours which embrace the last night and day of our Re- 
deemer's life, you will find that more frequent and more minute preinti- 
mations of what occurred throughout their course are to be found in 
the prophetic pages, than of what happened in any other equal period 
in the history of our globe. The seemingly trifling character of some 
of the incidents which are made the subjects of prophecy at first 
surprises us ; but that surprise changes into wonder as we perceive 
that they fix our attention upon the death of Jesus Christ, as the 
central incident of this world's strange history, the one around which 
the whole spiritual government of this earth revolves. By all those 
promises and prophecies, those typical persons and typical events 
and typical services, the raising of the altar, the slaying of the sacri- 
fice, the institution of the priesthood, the ark with its broken tables 
and sprinkled mercy-seat, the passover, the great day of aionement, 
the passage of the high priest within the veil ; by the voice of God 
himself speaking, in the first promise, about the seed of the woman, 
and the bruising of his heel ; by the wonderful Psalms of David, in 
which the general description of the suffering righteous man passes 
into those minute details which were embodied in the crucifixion ; 
by those rapt utterances of Isaiah, some portions of which read 
now more like histories of the past than intimations of the future — 
the eye of this world's hope was turned to that event beforehand, as 
backward to it the eye of the world's faith has ever since been 
directed. 

But, thirdly, that we may make our way into the very heart of 
iU meaning, does not the expression, "It is finished," suggest the 
idea af a prescribed, a distinct, a definite work, brought to a final, 
satisfactory, and triumphant conclusion? Spoken in no boastful 



746 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

spirit, it is the language of one who, having had a great commission 
given him, a great task assigned, announces that the commission has 
been executed, the task fulfilled. Taking it as the simple announce- 
ment of the fact, that some great transaction was brought to its con- 
summation, we ask ourselves, as we contemplate the entire circle of 
Jie Redeemer's services to our race, still running out their course, 
what part of these services was it of which it could be said that it 
was then finished ? Here, in the foreground, we have to put that one 
and perfect sacrifice which he offered up for the sin of the world. 
Through the Eternal Spirit, he offered himself without spot to God, 
and by that one sacrifice for sin, once for all, he hath perfected for 
ever those that are sanctified ; he hath done all that was needed to 
atone for human guilt, to redeem us from the curse of the law, to 
finish transgression, to make an end of sin, to make reconciliation for 
iniquity. 

But again, Christ's death upon the cross brought to a close that 
obedience to the Divine law, that perfect fulfilment of all the righte- 
ousness which is required ; held out to us as the ground upon which 
we are to find immediate and full acceptance with our Maker. "As 
by one man's disobedience many were made sinners; so by the obe- 
dience of one shall many be made righteous." " He made him to be 
sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness 
of God in him." "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory 
of God : being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption 
that is in Christ Jesus ; whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation 
through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remis- 
sion of sins that are past; to declare, I say, at this time his righteous- 
ness; that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth 
in Jesus." 

Farther still — though embraced indeed in the two particulars of 
the sufferings and services of the Redeemer already mentioned— 
there was finished upon the cross the new, the full, the wonderful 
revelation of the Father, that unbosoming of the Eternal, the open 
ing up to us of the very heart of the Godhead, the exhibition of the 
mingled love and holiness of our Father who is in heaven. There 
was completed then that glorious, that attractive, that subduing man- 
ifestation of the love of God for sinful men, which carried the. Divine 
Being to the extreme length of suffering and of self-sacrifice, and 
which has ever formed the most powerful of all instruments for 
pacifying the conscience, melting the heart, moulding the character, 
renewing and sanctifying the will. 

Whether, then, he looked up to God, and thought of his having 



"IT IS FINISHED." 747 

glorified his name, finished the work that had been given him to do ; 
or whether he looked down to man, and thought of the saving power 
which his cross was to exert over millions upon millions of the 
human family, it may well have been to Jesus Christ a moment oi 
intensest joy, when — his latest pang endured, his last service render- 
ed, his strictly vicarious work completed — he exclaimed, "It is 
finished!" 

To Jesus Christ alone was given that joy in dying which springs 
from the knowledge that all the ends of living and dying had been 
perfectly answered. Looking upon the career he had pursued, he 
could see not a single blot nor blank space in the whole. Of what 
other man, cut off as he was in the midst of his years, could the 
same be said? When good and great men die in the full flush of 
their manhood, the full vigor of their powers, we are apt to mourn 
the untimely stroke that has laid them low, that has cut short so 
many of the undertakings they were engaged in, deprived the world 
of so much service that it was in their heart to have rendered. Nor 
can any such look back upon the past without this humbling feeling 
in the retrospect, that many an offence has been committed, many a 
duty left imperfectly discharged. But for us there is no place for 
mourning, as we contemplate the death of our Redeemer, which came 
to close the one and only life which, stainless throughout its every 
hour, did so thoroughly and to the last degree of the Divine require- 
ment accomplish all that had been intended. And for him it was as 
if the cup of bitterness having been drunk, the cry of agony as he 
drained the last drop of it having been uttered, there was given to 
him, even before he died, to taste a single drop of that other cup — 
that cup of full ecstatic bliss, which the contemplation of the travail 
of his soul, of the glory it rendered to the Father, the good it did to 
man, shall never cease to yield. 

But to what practical use are we to turn this declaration of our 
dying Saviour? He rested complacently, gratefully, exultingly, in 
the thought that his work for us was finished. Shall we not try to 
enter into the full meaning of this great saying ? Shall we not try, 
in the way in which it becomes us, to enter with him into that same 
rest? For the forgiveness, then, of all our sins, for our acceptance 
with a holy and righteous God, let us put our sole, immediate, and 
entire trust upon this finished work of our Eedeemer; let us beliovo, 
that whatever obstacles our guilt threw in the way of our being 
received back into the Divine favor, have been removed ; that what- 
ever the holiness of the lawgiver, and the integrity of his law, and 
the moral interests of his government required in the way of atone- 



748 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

ment or expiation, has been rendered. Let us look upon the way of 
access to God as lying quite open to us ; let us take the pardon ; let 
us enter into peace with God ; let us bring all our guilt and bury it 
in the depths of his atonement. Let us lay hold of the righteous- 
ness of Christ, and clothe ourselves with it in the Divine presence ; 
and regarding the reconciliation with God, effected by the death of 
his dear Son, as only the first step or stage of the Christian salvation, 
let us throw open our whole mind and heart to the blessed influences 
that Christ's love, his life, his sufferings, his death, his entire exam- 
ple were intended to exert in making us less selfish, more loving, more 
dutiful, more thankful, more submissive, more holy. 

There still remain, for one or two brief remarks, these last words 
of our Kedeemer: "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit." 
The words are borrowed from one of the Psalms. Jesus dies with a 
passage of the old Hebrew Scriptures on his lips, only he prefaces 
the words by the epithet so familiar to his lips and heart, " Father." 
In the depth of his bitter anguish, under the darkness of momentary 
desolation, he had dropped this phrase. It had been then, " My 
God, my God !" But now, once more, in the light that shines with- 
in, around, he resumes it, and he says, " Father, into thy hands I 
commit my spirit." If the saying which went before, "It is finished," 
be taken, as it well may be, as Christ's last word of farewell to the 
world he leaves behind, this may be taken as his first word of greet- 
ing to the new world that he is about to enter. New world, we say, 
for though, as the Eternal Son, he was but returning to the glory 
that he had with the Father before the world was, let us not forget 
that death was to the humanity of the Lord — as it will be to each 
and all of us — an entrance upon a new and untried state. It seems 
to us as if, in these last words of our Elder Brother, it was that na- 
ture of ours he wore which breathed itself forth in our hearing ; that 
human nature which, when the hour of departure comes, looks out 
with trembling solicitude into the world of spirits, seeking for some 
one there into whose hands the departing spirit may confidently com- 
mit itself. In the "It is finished," the voice of the great High Priest, 
the Eternal Son of the Father, predominates. In the " Father, into 
thy hands I commit my spirit," is it not the voice of the man Christ 
Jesus that mainly salutes our ear? No timidity, indeed, nor fear, 
nor any such trembling awe as any of us might fitly feel in dying. 
Nothing of these ; not a shadow of them here ; yet certainly solem- 
nity, concern, the sense as of a need of some support, some upbear- 
ing hand. And shall we not thank our Saviour, that not only has he 
made the passage before us, and opened for us, in doing so, the gate 



THE ATTENDANT MIRACLES. 749 

to eternal life, but taught us, by his own example, not jo wonder if 
our weak human nature, as it stands upon the brink, should look out 
with an eager solicitude to find the hands into which, in making the 
great transition, it may throw itself ? 

And where shall we find those hands ? He found them in the 
hands of that Father, who at all times had been so well pleased with 
him. We find them in his hands who went thus before us to his 
Father and our Father, to his God and our God. He too found them 
there who has left us the earliest example how a true Christian may 
and ought to die. Considering the small number of the Lord's disci- 
ples, we may believe that Stephen was not only the first of the Chris- 
tian martyrs, but actually the first after the crucifixion who fell asleep 
in Jesus. Can we doubt that in dying the last words of Jesus were 
in Stephen's memory ? There had been too many points of resem- 
blance between his own and his Master's trial and condemnation, for 
Stephen not to have the close of the Kedeemer's life before his mind. 
His dying prayer is an echo of that which came from his Master's 
lips; the same, yet changed. It might do for the sinless one to say, 
" Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit." It is not for the sin- 
ful to take up at once and appropriate such words ; so, turning to 
Jesus, the dying martyr says, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," in thai 
simple, fervent, confiding petition, leaving behind him, for all ages, 
the pattern of a sinner's dying prayer, modelled upon the last words 
of the dying Saviour. 



XII. 

The Attendant Miracles.* 

In all its outward form and circumstance, there scarcely could 
have been a lowlier entrance into this world of ours than that made 
by Jesus Christ. The poorest wandering gypsy's child has seldom 
had a meaner birth. There was no room for Mary in the inn. She 
brought forth her firstborn son amid the beasts of the stall, and she 
laid him in a manger. But was that birth — which, though it had so 
little about it to draw the notice of man, was yet the greatest that 
this earth has ever witnessed — to pass by without any token of its 
greatness givfm ? No ; other eyes than those of men were fixed on 
it, and other tongues were loosened to celebrate it. The glory of the 

* Mutt. 27 : 51-54 ; Mark 15 : 39 ; Luke 23 : 47-49 ; John 19 : 31 37. 



750 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Lord shone around the shepherds, and the multitude of the heavenly 
host, borrowing for a time the speech of Canaan, filled the midnight 
sky with their praises as they chanted, " Glory to God in the highest, 
and on earth peace, goodwill toward men." Never was there a low- 
lier cradle than that in which the new-born Redeemer lay ; but over 
what other cradle was there ever such a birth-hymn sung? 

And as with the birth, so also with the death of Jesus. In all its 
outward form and circumstance, a more humiliating death than that 
of being crucified as one of three convicted felons, he could not have 
died. There was no darker, more degrading passage through which 
he could have been sent forth from among the living. But was that 
death of the Eternal Son of God to have no outward marks of its 
importance imprinted on it ? Left to man, there had been none ; but 
heaven will not let it pass unsignalized. And so, at mid-day the 
darkness came and settled for three hours around the cross; and 
when at the ninth hour Jesus gave up the ghost, the veil of the tem- 
ple was torn in twain from the top to the bottom, and the rocks rent, 
and the graves opened. These were the external seals which the 
hand of the Omnipotent stamped upon the event, proclaiming its 
importance. But these seals were also symbols; they were more 
than mere preternatural indications that this was no common death. 
Each in its way told something about the character and object of 
this death. The mystery of those hidden sufferings of the Redeem- 
er's spirit — the inner darkening of the light of his Father's counte- 
nance — stood shadowed forth in the three hours' darkness. The 
rending of the veil had a meaning of its own, which it scarcely need- 
ed an apostle to interpret. To the few eyes that witnessed it, it must 
have been a most mysterious spectacle. Jesus died at the third hour 
after mid- day; the very hour when eager crowds of worshippers 
would be thronging into the courts of the temple, and all would be 
preparing for the evening sacrifice. Within the holy place, kindling 
perhaps the many lights of the golden candlestick, some priests would 
be busy before the inner veil which hung between them and the holy 
of holies; that veil no thin, old, time-worn piece of faded drapery, 
but fresh and strong, and thickly woven, for they renewed it year by 
year ; that holy of holies — the dark, secluded apartment within which 
lay the ark of the covenant, with the cherubim above it shadowing 
the mercy-seat, which no mortal footstep was permitted to invade, 
save that of the high priest once only every year. How strange, how 
awful to the ministering priests, standing before that veil, to feel the 
earth tremble beneath their feet, and to see the strong veil grasped, 
as if by two unseen hands of superhuman strength, ami torn down in 



THE ATTENDANT MIEACLES 751 

the middle from top to bottom — the glaring light of day, that never, 
for long centuries gone by, had entered there, flung into that sacred 
tenement, and all its mysteries laid open to vulgar gaze. The Holy 
Ghost by all this signified that while as yet that first tabernacle was 
standing, the way into the holiest, the access to God, was not yet 
made manifest ; but now, Christ being come, to offer himself without 
spot to God, neither by the blood of goats nor calves, but by his own 
blood, to enter into the true holy of holies — even as he died on Cal- 
vary that veil was rent asunder thus within the temple to teach us 
that a new and living way, open to all, accessible to all, had been 
consecrated for us through the rending of the Redeemer's flesh, that 
we might have boldness to enter into the holiest, and might draw 
near, each one of us, to God, with a new heart and in full assurance 
of faith. Little of all this may those few priests have known who 
stood that day gazing with awe-struck wonder upon that working of 
the Divine and unseen hand — to them a sign of terror, rather than a 
symbol of what the death on Calvary had done. We read, however, 
that not long afterwards — within a year — many priests became obe- 
dient unto the faith; and it pleases us to think that among those 
who, from the inner heart of Judaism, from the stronghold of its 
priestly caste, were converted unto Christ, some of those may have 
been numbered whose first movement in that direction was given 
them as they witnessed that rending of the veil, that laying open of 
the most holy place. 

" And the earth did quake : and the rocks rent ; and the graves 
trere opened" — the main office, let us believe, of that earthquake 
which accompanied, or immediately followed upon the death of 
Christ — not to strike terror into the hearts of men; not to herald 
judgments upon this earth ; not to swallow up the living in its open- 
ing jaws; no, but to shake the domains of death; to break the 
stony fetters of the dead; to lay open the graves, out of which the 
bodies of the saints might arise. It seems clear enough, from the 
words which Matthew uses — who is the only one of the evangelists 
who alludes to the event — that they did not come out of their graves 
till the morning of our Lord's own resurrection. It is scarcely con- 
ceivable that they had been reanimated before that time, and lain 
awake in their graves till his rising called them from their tombs. 
Then they did arise, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto 
many — one, certainly, of the most mysterious incidents which attend- 
ed the death and resurrection of the Saviour, suggesting many a 
question : Who were they that thus arose ? were they of the recent ly 
dead, recognized by loving relatives in the holy city; or were they 



752 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

chosen from the buried of many bygone generations ? Did they 
return to their sepulchres, or did the grave never more close ovei 
them ? Did they, after a brief appearance in the holy city, pass into 
the heavenly Jerusalem ? or did they linger upon this earth, to be 
the companions of our Lord during those forty days, so small a por- 
tion of which is occupied by Christ's appearance to his disciples, the 
rest spent where and how we know not ; and did they, that ministry 
to Jesus over, go up with him into the heavenly places ? All about 
them is hid in the deepest obscurity. Like shadows they come, like 
shadows they depart. This, however, their presence told, that the 
voice which from the cross cried, " It is finished," went where sound 
of human voice had never gone before, and did what sound of human 
voice had never done. It was heard among the dead ; it stirred the 
heavy sleepers there, and piercing the stony sepulchre, went quiver- 
ing into ears long sealed against all sound. And when the third 
morning dawned, these bodies of the saints arose, to complete as it 
were the pledge and promise of the general resurrection of the dead 
which our Lord's own rising carried with it, and having done that 
office, silently and mysteriously withdrew. You may have sometimes 
seen a day in early spring, stolen from the coming summer, a day of 
sunshine so bright and warm, of air so bland, of breeze so gentle, 
that, as if fancying that her resurrection-time had come, dead nature 
woke, buds began to burst, flower leaves to unfold, and birds to 
sing — all to be shut up again in death, as the bleak withering winds 
of days that followed swept across the plain. Even into such a day 
did the appearance of these old tenants of the grave turn that of our 
Lord's resurrection, lightening and enriching it with the promise of 
the time when all that are in their graves shall hear Christ's voice, 
and his full and final victory over death and the grave shall be accom- 
plished. 

Mark the evangelist, to whom we are indebted for so many minute 
and graphic incidents in the gospel history, tells us that at the mo- 
ment when Christ expired, the Roman officer in charge was standing 
over against him, within a few yards of the cross, gazing on the face 
of the Crucified. He had halted there as the darkness rolled away 
He heard that loud and piercing cry, as of one forsaken, come from 
the lips of Jesus. He saw the change come over the Saviour's coun- 
tenance, the light that spread over those pallid features, the joy that 
beamed from those uplifted eyes. Another and a louder cry — not 
now the cry as of one sinking in conflict, bat of one rejoicing in vic- 
tory — when suddenly Jesus bows his head and gives up the ghost ; 
that moment, too, the earthquake shook the earth, and the cross of 



THE ATTENDANT MIRACLES. 763 

Jesus trembled before the Romans eyes. The shaking earth, the 
trembling cross, impressed him less, as Mark lets us know, than the 
loud cry so instantly followed by death. He had, perhaps, been 
present at other crucifixions, and- knew well how long the band he 
ruled was ordinarily required to watch the crucified. But he had 
never seen, he had never known, he had never heard of a man dying 
upon a cross within six hours. He had seen other men expire ; had 
watched weak nature as it wanes away at death — the voice sinking 
into feebleness with its last efforts at articulation- -but he had never 
heard a man in dying speak in tones like these. And so impressed 
was he with what he saw and heard, that instantly and spontaneously 
he exclaimed, " Truly this man was the Son of God !" Foreignei 
and Gentile as he was, he may have attached no higher meaning to 
the epithet than Pilate did when he said to Jesus, " Art thou then 
the Son of God ?" This much, however, he meant to say, that truly 
and to his judgment this Jesus was more than human — was divine — 
was that very Son of God, whatever this might mean, which these 
Jews had condemned him for claiming to be. Such was the faith so 
quickly kindled in this Gentile breast. The cross is early giving 
tokens of its power. It lays hold of the dying thief, and opens to 
him the gates of paradise. It lays hold of this centurion, and works 
in him a faith which, let us hope, deepened into a trust in Jesus as 
his Saviour. From such unlikely quarters came the two testimonies 
borne to the Lord's divinity the day he died. 

The centurion speaks of him as one already dead. The pale face 
and the drooping head tell all the lookers-on that he has breathed 
his last. The great interest of the day is over; the crowd breaks 
up; group after group returning to Jerusalem, in very different 
mood and temper from that in which they had come out a few hours 
before. It had been little more at first than an idle curiosity which 
had drawn many of those onlookers that morning from their dwell- 
ings. Cherishing, perhaps, no particular ill-will to Jesus, they had 
joined the procession on its way to Calvary. They gather by the 
way that this Jesus had been convicted as a pretender, who had 
impiously claimed to be their king, their Christ. They see how 
irritated the high priests and their followers are at him. It is an 
unusual thing for these magnates of the people to come out, as they 
t'ow are doing, to attend a public execution. There must surely be 
something peculiarly criminal in this Jesus, against whom their 
enmity is so bitter. Soon these new-comers catch the spirit that 
tneir rulers have breathed into the crowd, and for the first three 
hours they heartily chime in with the others, and keep up fcheii 



75i THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

mockeiy of the crucified. But from the moment that the darkne«a 
falls upon them, what a change! There thej stand, silently peering 
through the gloom ; no jest nor laughter now, nor strife of mocking 
tongues. Ipon that cross, but dimly seen, their eyes are fixed, 
The wonder grows as to how all this shall end. It ends with thoso 
prodigies that accompany the death. Appalled by these, they smite 
upon their breasts — as Easterns do in presence of all superhuman 
power — and make their way back to their homes; no noisy, shouting 
rabble, but each man silent, and full of thought and awe. Who or 
what, then, could that Jesus be whom they had seen die such a 
death — at whose death the whole frame of nature seemed to quiver? 
Whatever he was, he was not what their rulers had told them. No 
false, deceitful man, no impious pretender. Was he then indeed 
their Christ, their king ? They got the answer to those questions a 
few weeks later, when Peter preached to that great company on the 
day of Pentecost; and may we not believe that among those who 
listened to the great apostle on that occasion, and to whom he spake 
as to the very men who, with wicked hands, had slain the Lord of 
glory, there were not a few of those who now returned to Jerusalem 
from Calvary, impressed and half-convinced, waiting but the work 
of the Spirit to turn them into true and faithful followers of the 
Crucified? 

Such was the impression made upon the Horn an officer, and on a 
section of the bystanders. But the high priests and then 1 minions, 
the true crucifiers of the Lord— what impression has all which has 
happened thus at Calvary made on them ? Has it stirred any doubt, 
has it awakened any compunction, has it allayed their fears or 
quenched their hate? No; they witness all these wonders, and 
remain hard and unrelenting as at the first. Speaking of that 
obduracy, which stood out against all the demonstrations of the 
Lord's divinity, St. Gregory exclaims : " The heavens knew him, 
and forthwith sent out a star and a company of angels to sing his 
birth. The sea knew him, and made itself a way to be trodden by 
his feet; the earth knew him, and trembled at his dying; the fjun 
knew him, and hid the rays of his light; the rocks knew him, for 
they were rent in twain ; Hades knew him, and gave up the dead 
it had received. But though the senseless elements perceived him 
to be their Lord, the hearts of the unbelieving Jews knew him not 
as God, and, harder than the very rocks, were not rent by repent 
ance." 

The only effect upon the rulers of the Jewish people of the 
sadden death of Jesus was to set them thinking how the crosses and 



THE ATTENDANT MIKACLES. 756 

bodies which hung upon them might most speedily be removed. 
Their own Jewish code forbade that the body of one hung upon 
a tree should remain over a single night: "His body shall not 
remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him 
that day, that thy land be not defiled." See Deut. 21. As cruci- 
fixion was a mode of punishment originally unknown among the 
Jews, this command refers to the case of those who, after death by 
stoning or strangulation, were hung upon a gibbet. The Roman 
law and practice were different. Crucifixion was the mode of death 
to which slaves and the greater criminals were doomed. In ordinary 
circumstances, the bodies of the crucified were suffered to hang upon 
the cross till the action of the elements, at times otherwise aided and 
accelerated, wasted them away. Even when sepulture was allowed, 
it was thought profitable for the ends of justice that for some days 
the frightful spectacle should be exposed to the public eye. In no 
case under the Roman rule did burial take place on the very day of 
the execution. If that rule were in this instance to be broken, it 
must be under the special leave and direction of Pilate. Besides, 
however, the natural desire that their own rather than the Roman 
method of dealing with the crucified should be followed, there was 
another and more special reason why the Jews desired that the 
bodies should as quickly as possible be removed. Next day was the 
Sabbcth; no common Sabbath either — the Sabbath of the great 
Paschal festival. It began at sunset. Only an hour or two remained. 
It would be offensive, ill-ominous, if on a day so sacred three bodies 
hanging upon crosses should be exhibited so near the holy city. It 
would disturb, defile the services of the holy day. Besides, who 
could tell what effect upon the changeful, excitable multitude this 
spectacle of Jesus might have, if kept so long before their eyes? A 
deputation is despatched, therefore, to Pilate, to entreat him to give 
orders that means may be taken to expedite the death by crucifixion, 
and have the bodies removed. Pilate accedes to the request; the 
necessary order is forwarded to Calvary, and the soldiers proceed in 
the ordinary way to execute it. They break the legs of both the 
others; they pass Jesus by. There is every sign, indeed, that he is 
already dead, but why not make his death thus doubly sure ? Per- 
haps, even over the spirits of those rough ard hardened men, the 
Saviour's looks and words, the manner of his death, the darkness 
and the earthquake, which they connected in some way with hi in, 
may have caused a feeling of awe to creep, restraining them froifi 
subjecting him to that rough handling which they were ready 
enough to give to the others. However this may have been, the 



756 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

shield of that prophecy — "A bone of him shall not be broken/ 
guarded his limbs from their rude and crushing strokes. 

One, indeed, of the soldiers is not to be restrained, and to make 
sure that this seeming death is real, he lifts his spear as he passes 
by, and thrusts it into the Kedeemer's side; a strong, rude thrust, 
sufficient of itself to have caused death, inflicting a wide, deep 
wound, that left behind such a scar, that Jesus could say to Thomas 
afterwards, "Keach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side." 
From that wound there flowed out blood and water, in such quan- 
tity, that the outflow attracted the special notice of John, who was 
standing at some distance from the cross; the blood and the water 
so distinct and distinguishable from one another, that this observoj 
could not be deceived, and thought it right to leave behind him this 
peculiarly emphatic testimony: "He that saw it, bare record, and 
his record is true; ard he knoweth that he saith true, thai ye might 
believe." It has been thought that John was led to put such stress 
upon this incident of the crucifixion, and to press into such prom- 
inence his own testimony as an eye-witness to its reality, on account 
of the convincing refutation thus afforded of two strange heresies 
that sprung up early in the church : the first, that Jesus never really 
died upon the cross, but only passed into a swoon, from which he 
afterwards revived; and the second, that it was not a real human 
body of flesh and blood, but only the appearance of one that was 
suspended on the cross. It may have been that the evangelist had 
these beliefs in view. But whatever was his immediate object in 
testifying so particularly and so earnestly to the fact, it only puts 
that fact so much the more clearly now before our eyes, authorizing 
us to assume it as placed beyond all doubt, that within an hour or 
so after Christ's death — for it could not have been much longer, 
when a deep incision was made in the side of the Eedeemer, there 
visibly flowed forth a copious stream of blood and water. Is that 
fact of any moment, does it give any clue to, or throw any light 
upon the proximate or physical cause of the death of Christ ? The 
answer to these questions we reserve for the present. 

Meanwhile, let us give a moment or two more to reflection upon 
that strange variety of impression and the effect which the cruci- 
fixion of our Lord had upon the original spectators. There were 
those whom that spectacle plunged into a despondency bordering 
on despair. Mary, the mother of our Lord was not able to bear 
that sight, and the love of her divine Son went forth, and withdrew 
her early from the trial of seeing him expire. His other acquain- 
tance, and the women that followed him from Galilee, stood afar o^ 



THE ATTENDANT MIRACLES. 757 

beholding; half ashamed and half afraid; with something of hope, 
with more of fear; lost in wonder that he, about whom they had 
been cherishing such grand, yet false and earthly expectations, 
should suffer himself, or should be suffered by that Father — of whom 
he had so often spoken as hearing him always, who had himself 
declared that he was at all times well pleased with him — to die such 
a death as this. As the darkness fell, perhaps a new hope sprung 
up within some of their breasts. Was Jesus about to use that dark- 
ness as a veil behind which he would withdraw himself, as he had 
withdrawn himself from those who were about to cast him from the 
rocky height at Nazareth ? Had he gone up to that cross to work 
there the greatest of his miracles ? and was he in very deed about to 
meet the taunt of his enemies, and come down from the cross that 
they might believe in him ? Alas ! if any such hope arose, the ninth 
hour quenched it; and when they saw him draw his latest breath, this 
band of friends and followers of Jesus turned their backs on Calvary, 
with slow, sad footsteps to return, dispirited and disconsolate, to 
their homes. Mainly this was owing to the strength of that preju- 
dice which had so early taken such strong possession of their minds, 
that the kingdom which their new Master was to set up was a tem- 
poral one. To that prejudice so sudden and so overwhelming a 
shock was given by the crucifixion, that, stunned and stupefied by it, 
ihese simple-minded followers of Jesus were for a time unable to 
recall, and unprepared to believe, his own predictions as to his 
death. Upon the scribes and Pharisees, the chief priests and rulers 
of the people, the six hours of the crucifixion had, as we have seen, 
none other than a hardening effect. The gentleness, the patience, 
the forgiving spirit, the thoughtfulness for others, the sore trouble of 
his own spirit, the supernatural darkness, the returning light, the 
sudden and sublime decease, the reeling earth, the opening graves — 
all these, which might have moved them, had they not been pos- 
sessed by the one great passion of quenching for ever the hated pre- 
tensions of this Nazarene — have no other influence upon their spirits 
than quickening their ingenuity to contrive how best, most quickly, 
and most securely, they can accomplish their design. And these 
are they of all that motley crowd, who knew the most, and made the 
greatest profession of religion ! These are the men who would not 
that morning cross the threshold of Pilate's dwelling, lest they might 
anfit themselves for the morrow's duties within the temple ! These 
are the men who cannot bear the thought that the services of their 
great Paschal Sabbath should be polluted by the proximity of the 
three crosses of Golgotha ! They can spill, without compunction, 



r 

758 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

the blood of the innocent. They can take that olood upon them- 
selves and upon their children, but they cannot suffer the sight of it 
to offend their eye as they go up to worship upon Mount Zion. 
These are the men who, in their deep self-ignorance, in their proud 
and boastful spirit, were wont to say, "If we had been in the days of 
our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the 
blood of the prophets." These are the men whose whole character 
and conduct are suggestive of the likenesses to themselves that have 
arisen in every age of the church, one of whose noted peculiarities is 
ever this, that to wound their pride, or expose in any way their 
hollow pretensions, is sure to draw down on all who attempt the 
dangerous office the very same malignity of dislike and persecution 
that nailed our Saviour to his cross. 

Upon many of the crowd which stood for those six hours around 
the cross, the events that transpired there appear to have produced 
that surprise, solemnity, alarm, and subdued state of feeling, they 
were so fitted to produce on the bulk of mankind. We have already 
ventured to express the hope that, with not a few of them, what they 
saw and heard prepared their minds and opened their hearts to 
receive the good seed which, scattered on the day of Pentecost by 
apostolic hands, was so watered with the influences of the Holy 
Spirit. 

But are we wrong in imagining, of another and perhaps still 
larger proportion of those who returned, beating their breasts, to 
Jerusalem, that a few days, or a few weeks, brought them down to 
their ordinary and natural condition of indifference and unconcern ? 
Yes, they would say, that was a wonderful forenoon; there was a 
strange occurrence of striking things about the close of that strange 
man's life ; but to any further inquiry after him — the lending their 
ears to that gospel which set him forth as crucified to redeem their 
souls from death, and cover, by his mediation, the multitude of 
their sins — they became too callous, the world had too strong a hold 
of them, to admit of their giving any further or more earnest heed. 
Have not these, too, their likenesses among us? men capable of 
strong but temporary impressions. Bring them to Golgotha, set up 
the cross before them, let them see the Saviour die, and their breasts 
may own a sentiment akin to that which affected so many personally 
at Calvary: but they are morning clouds those feelings, it is an early 
dew this softening of their hearts ; let the bright sun rise, the fresh 
breeze blow ; let the day, with so many calls to business and pleas- 
ure come, and those clouds vanish — this dew disappears. And yet 
the cross was not to be lifted up in vain. It hardened the Pharisees, 



PHYSICAL CAUSE OF THE DEATH OF CHKIST. 759 

it dispirited the disciples, it awed the multitude; but it saved the 
penitent thief, and it convinced the unprejudiced centurion. "I," 
said the Lord himself, contemplating beforehand the triumph of his 
cross — "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." And when 
he was lifted up, even before he died, and in the very act of dying, 
he drew to him that Gentile and that Jew, each one the leader of a 
multitude that no man may number, upon whom the power of that 
attraction has since acted. God grant that upon all our spirits this 
power may come, drawing us to Jesus now, and lifting us at last to 
heaven. 



XIII. 

The Physical Cause of the Death of Christ.* 

Had no one interfered, the body of our Lord had been taken 
down by the soldiers from the cross, by their cold and careless hands 
to be conveyed away to one of those separate burying-places reserved 
for those who had suffered the extreme penalty of the law. Not 
unfrequently, in such cases, friends or relatives came forward to 
crave the body at the hands of the authorities, that they might give 
it a more becoming burial. There was but one exception, the case of 
those whose crime was treason against the state — the very crime for 
which Christ had, nominally at least, been condemned. In that 
instance the mode of disposal of the body prescribed by law was 
rarely if ever departed from. But where are there any friends or 
relatives of Jesus in condition hopefully to interfere ? That small 
band of his acquaintance, which had stood throughout the crucifixion 
beholding it afar off, is composed principally of women. John, in- 
deed, is there, a witness of the closing scene, and of the preparation 
made for the removal of the bodies. But was Pilate, to whom appli- 
cation must of course be made, likely to listen to any petition that he 
might present ? John knew something of the high priest, but noth- 
ing of the Koman governor. There was everything in fact to dis- 
courage him from making any application in that quarter, even if the 
idea of doing so had occurred to him. But it is most unlikely that it 
had. For what could John, or the disciples generally, have done 
with the body of their Master though they had got it into their hands ? 
It must be buried quickly — within an hour or so. And where could 

* John 19 : 33-35 ; Mark 15 : 42-45. 



f 

760 THE LIFE OE CHRIST. 

these Galilean strangers find a grave at Jerusalem to lay it in, where 
but in some exposed and public place of sepulture, unsuitable for the 
destiny in store for it ? 

At the fitting' time, the fit instrument appears. Joseph of Arima- 
fchea, a rich man, an honorable councillor, a member of the Sanhedrim, 
Well known as such to Pilate, has either himself been present at the 
srucifixion, or hears how matters stand. Shall the body of Jesus 
pass into the rough hands of these Roman soldiers, and be dragged 
by them to a dishonored burial ? Not if he can hinder it. He has a 
new sepulchre of his own, close by the very place where Christ has 
died, whose very nearness to the spot suggests to him how suitable a 
place it would be for so sacred a deposit. Joseph goes instantly to 
Pilate, and boldly asks that the body may be given to him. Pilate 
makes no difficulty regarding the alleged crime of Jesus. He never 
had believed that Christ was guilty of treason against Caesar's gov- 
ernment; does not now act on any such assumption. But Joseph 
has told him something about the time and manner of the Saviour's 
death which he had not heard before, which greatly amazes and 
induces him to hesitate. Those Jews who had come to him a short 
time before, with the request that he would issue an order that the 
bones of the three might be broken and their bodies removed, must 
have come to him after the three hours' darkness, after the death of 
Christ. But they had told him nothing about that death. They 
had spoken as if the same means for expediting their decease had to 
be taken with all the three. Now, for the first time, he hears that 
Jesus had, even then, breathed his last ; had died just as that myste- 
rious darkness, which had troubled Pilate as it had troubled the 
crowd at Golgotha, had rolled away ; as that earthquake, which had 
shaken every dwelling in Jerusalem, had been felt within his resi- 
dence. Pilate will not believe it — can scarcely credit Joseph's story — 
must have a thing so strange attested upon better testimony. Wai- 
ving, in the meantime, all answer to Joseph's request, he sends for 
the centurion, who, doubtless, told him all that he had witnessed; 
told him about the loud voice, and the immediately succeeding death ; 
told him what raised in the eyes of these two Bomans, even to the 
height of a miracle, a death like this. 

We should understand their feelings better were we as familiar as 
they were with the common course of things at a crucifixion. It is 
now fifteen hundred years since this mode of punishment ceased to 
be practised in Christendom; it was discontinued because of the 
sacredness, the spiritual glory which Christ's crucifixion had thrown 
around it. With eyes unfamiliar with its details, yet with imagina- 



PHYSICAL CAUSE OF THE DEATH OE CHRIST. 761 

tions that delighted to picture its cruelties and horrors, the priest- 
hood of the middle ages put these materials into the hands of poets 
and painters, out of which the popular conceptions of the erection of 
the cross, and the sufferings on the cross, and the taking down from 
the cross, have for so long a time been drawn. There is much in 
these conceptions, that by using the means of information which we 
now possess, we can assure ourselves is incorrect. The cross was no 
such elevated structure as we see it sometimes represented, needing 
ladders to be applied to get at the suspended body. It was seldom 
more than a foot or two higher than the man it bore ; neither was the 
whole weight of his body borne upon the nails which pierced the 
hands. Such a position of painful suspension, causing such a strain 
upon all the muscles of the upper extremities, would have added 
greatly to the sufferings of the victim, and brought them to a much 
speedier close. The cross, in every instance, was furnished with a 
small piece of wood projecting from the upright post or beam, astride 
which the crucified sat, and which bore the chief weight of his body. 
The consequence of this arrangement was, that crucifixion was a 
much more lingering kind of death, and in its earlier stages, a much 
less excruciating one than we are apt to imagine, or than otherwise 
it would have been. As there was but little loss of blood— the nails 
that pierced the extremities touching no large blood-vessel, and clo- 
sing the wounds they made — the death which followed resulted from 
the processes of bodily exhaustion and irritation ; and these were so 
slow, that in no case, where the person was in ordinary health and 
vigor, did they terminate within twelve hours. Almost invariably he 
survived the first twenty-four hours, lived generally over the second, 
occasionally even into the fifth or sixth day. The ancient testimo- 
nies to this fact are quite explicit, nor are modern ones wanting, 
although there are but few parts of the world now where crucifixion 
is practised. "I was told," says Captain Clapperton, speaking of 
the capital punishments inflicted in Soudan, a district of Africa, "that 
wretches on the cross generally linger three days before death puts 
an end to their sufferings." 

So well was it understood by the early fathers of the church, by 
those who lived in or near the times when this mode of capital pun- 
ishment was still in use, that life never was terminated by it alone 
within six hours, as was the case with Christ, that they all agree in 
attributing his death to a supernatural agency. Most of them, as 
^ell as many of the most distinguished of our modern commentators, 
assign it to the exercise by Christ of the power over his own life 
which he possessed ; in accordance, it was thought, with his own dee- 



702 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

laraiion: "No man taketh my life from me, but I lay it down of my- 
self. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. 
This commandment have I received of my Father." That Christ's 
death was entirely voluntary, submitted to of his own free will, and 
not under any outward pressure or constraint, is universally conceded. 
This entire voluntariness, however, it will at once appear to you, is 
sufficiently covered and vindicated, when we believe that whatever 
the physical agencies were which combined to effect the death, it was 
an act of pure free will in him to submit to their operation. That 
without or independent of any such agency, Christ chose to accele- 
rate his decease upon the cross by a simple fiat of his own will — 
breaking the tie which bound body and soul together, was the solu- 
tion of the difficulty very naturally resorted to by those who had the 
clearest possible perception of the extraordinary character of this 
incident, and who knew of no other adequate cause to which it could 
be attributed. 

Another solution, indeed, has been proposed, reserved for modern 
times, but not coming from our highest authorities, which would 
explain the speedy death of Jesus on the cross by ascribing it to an 
extreme degree of bodily debility induced by the sleepless nights, the 
agony in the garden, the scourging in Pilate's hall, and the mental 
conflict at Calvary. All these must undoubtedly have told upon the 
frame of the suffering Redeemer, and have impaired its powers of 
endurance. But we must remember that they found that frame in the 
very flower and fulness of its strength, free, w< may believe, of all con- 
stitutional or induced defects. Nor should we, in order to make out 
this solution to be sufficient, exaggerate then actual effects. How- 
ever acute the bodily sufferings of Gethsemane may have been, we 
know that Jesus was supernaturally assisted to sustain them ; they 
passed wholly away when the mental agony which produced them 
ended. You see no trace of them, in our Lord's presentation of 
himself to the band which arrested him, or in his appearances before 
Caiaphas and Pilate. The scourging was a not uncommon precursor 
of crucifixion, and could not have enfeebled Chribt more than it did 
others. He bent so much beneath the weight of the cross that a 
temporary relief from the burden was given ; but that he had not 
sunk in utter exhaustion was apparent enough, from the very manner 
in which he turned immediately thereafter to the daughters of Jeru- 
salem, and from the way in which he spoke to them. Further evi- 
dence that Jesus did not sink prematurely under physical debility is 
afforded us by the fact, witnessed to particularly by many of the 
evangelists, and which, as we have already observed, made a strong 



PHYSICAL CAUSE OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 7G3 

impression upon the mind of the centurion. TLe fact alluded to is 
this, that it was with a loud voice, indicating a great amount of 
existing vigor, that Jesus uttered his last fervent exclamation on the 
cross. He did not die of sheer exhaustion, fainting away in feeble- 
ness, as one drained wholly of his strength. 

Are we, then, to leave the mystery of our Lord's dying thus, at 
ihe ninth hour, in the obscurity which covers it; or is there any 
other probable explanation of the circumstance? It is now some 
years since a devout and scholarly physician,* as the result, he tells 
us, of a quarter of a century's reading and reflection, ventured to 
suggest — dealing with this subject with all that reverence and deli- 
cacy with which it so especially requires to be handled — that the 
immediate physical cause of the death of Christ was the rupture of 
his heart, induced by the inner agony of his spirit. That strong 
emotion may of itself prostrate the body in death, is a familiar fact 
in the history of the passions.f Joy, or grief, or anger, suddenly or 
intensely excited, has been often known to produce this effect. It 
is only, however, in later times that the discovery has been made, by 
post mortem examinations, that in such instances, the death resulted 
from actual rupture of the heart. That organ, which the universal 
language of mankind has spoken of as being peculiarly affected by 
the play of the passions, has been found in such cases to have been 
rent or torn by the violence of its own action. The blood issuing 
from the fissure thus created has filled the pericardium, J and, by its 
pressure, stopped the action of the heart. In speaking of those who 
have died of a broken heart, we have been using words that were 
often exactly and literally true. 

If this, then, be sometimes one of the proved results of extreme, 
intense emotion, why may it not have been realized in the case of 
the Redeemer ? If common earthly sorrow has broken other human 
hearts, why may not that sorrow, deep beyond all other sorrow, have 
broken his? We know that of itself, apart from all external appli- 
ances, the agony of his spirit in Gethsemane so affected his body 
that a bloody sweat suffused it — a result identical with what has 
been sometimes noticed of extreme surprise or terror having bathed 

* Dr. Stroud, in a treatise •' On the Physical Cause of the Death of Christ," 
published in 184=7. 

f Ancient story tells us of one of the greatest of Greek tragedians (Soph 
ocles) expiring on its being announced to hi in that the palm of victory had been 
awarded him, in a public literary contest in which he was engaged ; of a fathei 
dying on its being told him that, on the same day, three of his sons had been 
crowned as victors in the Olympian games. — See Dr. Stroud's treatise. 

X The shut sac or bag by which the heart is .surrounded and enclosed. 



?64 THE LIFE OF CHK1ST. 

the liuinan body in the same kind of bloody dew. Why, then, should 
not the agony of the Saviour's spirit on the cross — which we have 
every reason to regard as a renewal of that in the garden — have told 
upon his physical frame in a way equally analogous to other results 
verified by experience ? Still, however, had we nothing more posi- 
tive to go upon, it could only be regarded as a conjecture, a thing 
conceivable and quite possible, that Jesus had literally died of a 
broken heart. But that striking incident, upon the nature of which, 
and the singular testimony regarding it, we remarked in the close of 
the previous topic, puts positive evidence into our hands; and the 
precise weight of this evidence every recent inquiry into the condition 
of the blood within the human body after death has been helping ns 
more accurately and fully to appreciate. Let me remind you, then, 
that within an hour of two after our Saviour's death, (it could not 
have been more,) what the skilful knife of the anatomist does upon 
the subject on which it operates, the Roman soldier's spear did upon 
the dead body of our Lord — it broadly and deeply pierced the side, 
and from the wound inflicted thus there flowed out blood and water; 
so much of both, and the water so distinguishable from the blood, as 
to attract the particular observation of John, who was standing a 
little way off. We cannot be wrong in fixing our attention upon a 
fact to which the beloved apostle so especially summons it in his 
gospel. 

First, then, we have it now authenticated beyond reasonable 
doubt, that what John noticed, the copious outflow of water, is pre- 
cisely what would have happened on the supposition that the heart 
of our Redeemer had been ruptured under the pressure of inward 
grief — is precisely what has been noticed in other instances of this 
form of death. When it escapes from the blood-vessels, whether 
that escape takes place within the body or without, human blood 
within a short time coagulates, its watery part separating slowly 
from its thicker substance. When rupture of the heart takes place, 
and the blood which that organ contains passes into the pericardium, 
it ere long undergoes this change ; and, as the capsule into which it 
flows is large enough to contain many ounces' weight of liquid, if, 
when it is full, the heart be pierced, the contents escaping exhibit 
such a stream of mingled blood and water as the eye of John noticed 
as he gazed upon the cross. This is what the anatomist has actually 
witnessed; numerous instances existing in which the quantity and 
quality of the blood escaping from a ruptured heart have been care- 
fully noted and recorded. Having satisfied ourselves as to these 
facts, from regarding it at first as but an ingenious supposition, we 



PHYSICAL CAUSE OF THE DEATH OF CHEIST. 765 

feel constrained to regard it as in the highest degree probable that 
Christ our Saviour died this very kind of death. But what shuts us 
up to this conclusion is, that no other satisfactory explanation can 
be given of the outflow of blood and water from the Saviour's side. 
When not extravasated — that is, when allowed at death to remain in 
the vascular system — the blood of the human body rarely coagu- 
lates, and when it does, the coagulation, or separation into blood 
and water, does not take place till many hours after death. In rare 
instances — of persons dying from long-continued or extreme debil- 
ity — the entire blood of the body has been found in a half watery 
condition ; but our Saviour's death was not an instance of this kind, 
and even though it should be imagined that what long-continued 
illness did with others, agony of spirit did with him, inducing the 
! same degree of debility, attended with all its ordinary physical 
I results ; this, which is the only other supposition that can be held as 
accounting to us for what John witnessed, fails in this respect, that, 
pierce when or how it might, it could only have been a few trickling 
drops of watery blood that the spear of the soldier could have 
extracted from the Redeemer's side. Inasmuch, then, as all other 
attempted explanations of the recorded incidents of our Redeemer's 
death are found to be at fault, and inasmuch as it corresponds with 
and explains them all, we rest in the belief that such was the bitter 
agony of the Redeemer's soul as he hung upon the cross, that — 
unstrengthened now by any angel from heaven, as during the agony 
in the garden, when but for that strengthening the same issue 
might have been realized — the heart of our Redeemer was broken, 
and in this way the tie that bound body and spirit together was 
dissolved. 

But of what use is it to institute any such inquiry as that in 
which we have been engaged ? or what gain would there be in win- 
ning for the conclusion arrived at a general assent? It might be 
enough to say here that, if reverently treated, there is no single 
incident connected with the life or death of our divine Redeemer, 
upon which it is possible that any light may be thrown, which does 
not solicit at our hands the utmost effort we can make fully and 
minutely to understand it. Even, then, though it should appear 
that no direct or practical benefit would attend the discovery and 
establishment of the true and proximate physical cause of the death 
of Christ, still we should regard the inquiry as one in itself too full 
of interest to refrain from prosecuting it. But would it not be won- 
derful, would it not correspond with other evidences of the truth of 
the gospel narrative which the progress of our knowledge has elimi- 



766 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

nated, should it turn out to be true, as we believe it has done, that 
the accounts of the sufferings and death of Jesus, drawn up by four 
independent witnesses — all of them uninformed as to the true state 
of the case, and signally ignorant how that which they recorded 
might serve to reveal it — did, nevertheless, when brought together 
and minutely scrutinized, contain within them those distinct and 
decisive tokens which the advanced science of this age recognizes as 
indicative of a mode of death, so singular in its character, so rare in 
its occurrence, so peculiar in its physical effects ? 

Would it not also give a new meaning to some of the expressions 
which in Psalms 69 and 22 — the two psalms specially predictive of 
his sufferings and death — our Saviour is himself represented as em- 
ploying? Read together the twentieth and twenty-first verses of 
Psalm 69 : " Reproach hath broken my heart ; and I am full • of 
heaviness : and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none ; 
and for comforters, but I found none. They gave me also gall for 
my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink." If the 
ver}' kind of drink they were to offer him was not deemed unworthy 
of being specified in that ancient prophecy — the very smallness, in 
fact, of the incident making it serve all the better the purposes of 
the prophecy — need we wonder if it were only the literal truth which 
the speaker uttered when he said, "Eeproach hath broken my heart"? 
When so much has turned out to be literally true, it is but ranking 
that expression with the others, when it also has that character 
assigned to it. Or take the fourteenth verse of Psalm 22: "I am 
poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint : my heart is 
like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels." Here, again, we 
feel that, if in other parts of that psalm — if in speaking of the shoot- 
ing out of the lips, the shaking of the head, the words that were 
spoken, the parting of his garments, the casting of lots for his ves- 
ture — the great Sufferer is recognized as describing that which did 
afterwards actually occur, it is not surprising if, in describing his 
own bodily condition, in speaking, as he does, especially of the state 
of his heart, he should be speaking of that which also was actually 
realized. 

But there are positive benefits attendant on the reception of that 
view of the Saviour's death which I have now unfolded to you. It 
serves, I think, to spiritualize and elevate our conception of the suf- 
ferings of Calvary ; it carries our thoughts away from the mere bodily 
endurances of the crucifixion; it concentrates them on that mysteri- 
ous woe which agitated his spirit, till the very heart that beat within 
the body of the agonized Redeemer, under the powerful impulse of 



PHYSICAL CAUSE OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 767 

those emotions which shook and wrung his soul, did burst and break. 
If the bloody sweat of the garden, and the broken heart of the cross, 
were naturally, directly, exclusively the results of those inward sor- 
rows to which it pleased the Saviour to open his soul, that in the 
enduring of them he might bear our sins, then how little had man to 
do physically with the infliction of that agony wherein the great 
atonement lay! If we have read and interpreted aright the details 
of our Lord's sufferings in the garden and on the cross, these very 
details do of themselves throw into the background the corporeal 
part of the endurances, representing it in fact only as the appropri- 
ate physical appendix to that overwhelming sorrow, by which the 
spirit of the Redeemer was bowed down under the load of human 
guilt. This spiritual sorrow formed the body of that agony of which 
the corporeal was but the shadow and the sign. 

From the very heart of the simple but most affecting records oi 
Gethsemane and the cross there issues the voice of a double warn- 
ing — a warning against any such estimate of the sufferings of the 
man Christ Jesus as would assimilate them to the common sorrows 
of suffering humanity. As a man there was nothing in all that he 
had to endure from man, which can in any way account for his sweat 
being as great drops of blood in the garden. In the rending of his 
heart upon the cross, his sufferings remain, even in their outward 
manifestations and results, inexplicable on any other supposition 
than that which attributes to them a vicarious character, represent- 
ing them as borne by the incarnate Son of God, as the head and 
representative of his people. But while the very outward history of 
Gethsemane and the cross pleads thus strongly against any lowering 
of our estimate of the true character and design of Christ's suffer- 
ings, does it not as strongly and persuasively lift up its protest 
against those pictorial and sentimental representations of the Saviour 
in his agony and in his death, which make their appeal to a mere 
human sympathy, by dwelling upon and exaggerating the bodily en- 
durances which were undergone ? We approach these closing scenes 
of our Redeemer's life, we plant our footsteps in the neighborhood 
of the garden and the cross; and as we do so, we begin to feel 
that it is very sacred ground that we tread. "We try to get nearer 
and nearer to the Great Sufferer, to look a little farther into the 
bosom of that exceeding sorrow of his troubled, oppressed, bewilder- 
ed spirit. It is not long ere we become convinced, that in that sor- 
row there are elements we are altogether unable to compute and 
appreciate, and that our most becoming attitude, in presence of such 
a sufferer as this — the One through whose sufferings for us we look 



768 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

for our forgiveness and acceptance with God — is one of childlike 
trust, devout adoring gratitude and love. It is too remote, too hid- 
den a region this for us rashly to invade, in the hope, that with those 
dim lights which alone are in our hands, we shall be able to explore 
it. It is too sacred a region for the vulgar tread of a mere human 
curiosity, or the busy play of a mere human sympathy. 

But what chiefly commends to us the view now given of the Ke- 
deemer's death, is its correspondence with all that the Scriptures 
teach as to the sacrificial character of that death — all that they tell 
us of the virtue of Christ's most precious blood. More clearly and 
immediately than any other does this view represent Christ's death 
as the proximate and natural result of the offering up of himself to 
God, the pouring out of his soul in the great sacrifice for sin. From 
the lips of the broken-hearted, these words seem fraught to us with 
a new significance, " No man taketh my life from me ; I lay it down 
of myself," — all, even to the very death of the body, being embraced 
in his entire willingness that there should be laid upon him the trans- 
gressions of us all. It was his soul, his life, that Jesus gave a ran- 
som for many. The life was regarded as lying in the blood, and so 
it was the blood of the sacrificed animal that was sprinkled of old 
upon the door-posts, upon the altar, upon the mercy-seat — the ato- 
ning virtue regarded as accompanying the application of the blood ; 
and so, lifting this idea up from the level of mere ceremonialism, we 
are taught that " without shedding of blood," without life given for 
life, "there is no remission;" and so, still farther pointing us to the 
one true sacrifice, we are told that not by the blood of bulls and 
goats, but by his own blood Christ has entered into the holy place, 
having obtained eternal redemption for us. It is the blood of Christ 
which "cleanseth us from all sin." It is the blood of Christ which 
" purges the conscience from dead works, to serve the living God." 
It is the blood of the covenant by which we are sanctified. We know, 
and desire ever to remember, that this is but a figurative expression ; 
that the blood of Christ stands only as the type or emblem of the 
life that was given up to God for us. But the blood merely of a 
* crucifixion does not fill up the type, does not put its full meaning into 
the figure. Crucifixion was not a bloody death, it was only a few 
trickling drops that flowed from the pierced hands and feet. But if, 
indeed, it was his very heart's blood which Jesus poured out in the 
act of giving up his life for us on Calvary, with what fuller and richer 
significance will that expression, "the blood of Jesus," fall upon the 
ear of faith ! This, then, is he — his bleeding broken heart the wit- 
ness to it — who came by water and by blood ; not by water only, but 



THE BURIAL. 769 

by water and by blood. With minds afresh impressed by the thought 
how it was that the blood of Christ was shed; with hearts all full of 
gratitude and love, let us take up the words that the Spirit has put 
into our lips : " Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins 
in his own blood, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever." 
"Thou art worthy, for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God 
by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and 
nation." 

"Rock of ages, cleft for me, 
Let me hide myself in thee ; 
Let the water and the blood, 
From thy riven side that flowed, 
Be of sin the double cure, 
Cleanse me from its guilt and power. " 



XIV. 

The Burial. 



Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were both rulers of the 
Jews, both members of the Sanhedrim — the Jewish council or court, 
composed of seventy members, in whose hands the supreme judicial 
power was lodged. It was the right and duty of both these men to 
have been present at the trial of our Lord on the morning of the 
crucifixion. In common with the other members of the Sanhedrim, 
they in all likelihood received the early summons to assemble in the 
hall of Caiaphas. It would seem, however, that they did not obey 
the call ; that, knowing something beforehand of the object of the 
meeting, of the spirit and design of those who summoned it, they 
absented themselves. We infer this from the fact that when, afW 
Christ's great confession, the high priest put the question, "What 
think ye?" to the council, they all condemned him to be guilty of 
death. But we are told of Joseph, that he had not "consented to the 
counsel and deed" of those by whom the arrest and condemnation of 
Jesus were planned and executed. In what way his dissent had been 
expressed we are not informed, but having somehow intimated it be- 
forehand, it is altogether improbable that, without any demur on his 
part, he should have been a consenting party to the final sentence 
when pronounced. And neither had Nicodemus gone in with the 
xmrse which his fellow -rulers had from the beginning pursued towaida 

* John 19 : 38-42 ; Luke 23 : 55 ; Matt. 27 : 61. 

Ufa of OhrUt. 49 



770 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Jesus. When the officers of the chief priests and Pharisees came 
back to their employers, their task unexecuted, giving as their reason 
for not having arrested Jesus, that " never man spake like this man," 
so provoked were those Pharisees at seeing such influence exerted 
by Jesus upon their own menial servants, that- in the passion of the 
moment, they exclaimed, "Are ye also deceived? Have any of the 
rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him? But this people, who 
knoweth not the law, are cursed." 

Perhaps the question about the rulers touched the conscience of 
Nieodemus, who was present on the occasion; perhaps he felt that it 
was not so true as they imagined, that none of the rulers believed on 
Jesus ; perhaps he felt somewhat ashamed of himself and of the false 
position which he occupied. At any rate, the haughty and contempt- 
uous tone of his brethren stirred him up for once to say a word. 
"Doth our law," said he to them, "judge any man before it hear 
him, and know what he doeth?" A veiy gentle and reasonable 
remonstrance, but one which had no other effect than turning against 
hirnself the wrath that had been expending itself upon their officials. 
"Art thou also," they say to him, "of Galilee?" Nicodemus cowered 
under that question, and the suspicion that it implied. Neither then 
nor afterwards did he say or do anything more which might expose him 
to the imputation of being a follower of Jesus ; but we cannot think 
so ill of him as to believe that, beyond concealing whatever belief in 
Christ he cherished, he would have played the hypocrite so far as to 
let his voice openly be heard as one of those condemning our Lord 
to death. 

Let us judge both these men as fairly and gently as we ourselves 
would desire to be judged. To what amount of enlightenment and 
belief as to the character and claims of Christ they had arrived pre- 
vious to his decease, it were difficult to imagine. Both must have 
had a large amount of deep, inveterate Jewish prejudice to contend 
with in accepting the Messiahship of the Nazarene; not such preju 
dice alone as was common to the great mass of then* couutrymen, bu 
such as had a peculiar hold on the more educated men of their time, 
when raised to be guides and rulers of the people. Over all this 
prejudice Joseph had already triumphed; there was a sincerity and 
integrity of judgment in him, an earnest spirit of faith and hope ; he 
was a good man and a just ; one who, like the aged Simeon, had beer 
waiting for the kingdom of God, the better prepared to hail it in 
whatever guise it came. He had thus become really, though no 
openly or professedly, a disciple of Jesu?. We do not know whether 
Nicodemus had got so far. We. do know, however, that the rery first 






! 

s 
1 

■ 



THE BURIAL. 771 

words and acts of Jesus at Jerusalem made the deepest and most 
favorable impression on his mind. It was at the very opening of 
our Lord's ministry, that this man came to Jesus by night. Instead 
of thinking of the covert way in which he came, only to find ground 
of censure in it, let us remember that he was the one and only ruler 
who did in any way come to Jesus; and that he came — as his very 
first words of salutation and inquiry showed — in the spirit of deep 
respect, and earnest desire for instruction. Let us remember, too, 
that without one word of blame escaping from our Lord's own lips, 
it was to this man that, at so early a period of his ministry, our Sav- 
iour made the clear and full disclosure of the great object of his own 
mission and death, preserved in the third chapter of the gospel by 
John ; that it was to Nicodemus he spake of that new spiritual birth 
by which the kingdom was to be entered; that it was to Nicodemus 
he said, that as Moses had lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, 
even so must He be lifted up: that it was to Nicodemus that the 
great saying was addressed, " God so loved the world that he gave 
his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not 
perish, but have everlasting life." Surely he who, up till near the 
close, was so chary of speaking about his death even to his own dis- 
ciples, would not, at the very beginning of his ministry, have spoken 
thus to this ruler of the Jews, had he not perceived in him one wil- 
ling and waiting to be taught. Christ must have seen some good soil 
in that man's heart, to have scattered there so much of the good seed. 
That seed was long of germinating, but it bore fruit at last, very 
pleasant for the eye to look upon. 

It was the fault both of Joseph and Nicodemus, that they hid, as 
it were, their faces from Christ ; that they were ashamed and afraid 
to confess him openly. But who shall tell us exactly what their state 
of mind, their faith and feeling toward him were ; how much of hesi- 
tation both of them may — indeed, we may boldly say must — have felt 
as to many things about Jesus which they could in no way harmo- 
nize with their conceptions of the Great Prophet that was to arise ? 
" Search and look," his brother councillors had said to Nicodemus, 
at that time when he had ventured to interpose the question which 
provoked them — " search and look ; for out of Galilee ariseth no 
prophet." Nicodemus had nothing to say to that bold assertion; 
nothing to say, we may well believe, to many an objection taken to 
the pretensions of the Son of the Galilean carpenter. In common 
with Joseph, he may have believed; but both together may have 
been quietly waiting till some further and more distinct manifesta- 
tions of his Messiahship were made by Christ. But why did thej 



772 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

not, so far as they did believe in him, openly acknowledge it ? Why 
did they not feel rebuked by that poor man, blind from his birth, 
dragged for examination before them, who witnessed in their presence 
so good a confession ? It was because they knew so well that their 
brother rulers had agreed that, "if any man did confess that he was 
Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue." It was because they 
knew so well and felt so keenly what to them that excommunication 
would involve : for it was no slight punishment among the Jews to be 
expelled from the synagogue ; it involved in its extreme issue conse- 
quences far more disastrous than a mere ban of admission into their 
religious assemblies ; it involved loss of station, separation from kin- 
dred and the society of their fellow-men. To the poor blind beggar 
upon whom it actually was passed, that doom may have fallen but 
lightly; for he had never known much of that of which this doom 
was to deprive him. A very different thing this expulsion from the 
synagogue would have been to Joseph and to Nicodemus. Let us 
not judge these men too harshly for the reluctance they showed to 
brave it ; let us rather try to put ourselves exactly in their position, 
that we may sympathize with the hesitation which they felt in ma- 
king any open acknowledgment of their attachment to Christ. 

His death, however, at once put an end to that hesitation in both 
their breasts. They may not have been present at the crucifixion. 
They would not well have known where to take their station, or how 
to comport themselves there. They could not have joined in the 
mockery, nor were they prepared to exhibit themselves as friends of 
the Crucified. But though not spectators of the tragedy, they were 
somewhere in the immediate neighborhood, waiting anxiously to 
learn the issue. Could they, members of the same Sanhedrim, thrown 
often into contact, witnesses of each other's bearing and conduct, as 
to all the steps which had been taken against Jesus, have remained 
ignorant of each other's secret leanings toward the persecuted Naza- 
rene ? Was it by chance that they met together at the cross, to act 
in concert there ? We would rather believe that, attracted by the tie 
of a common sympathy with Jesus, the sad news of his being taken 
out to Golgotha to be crucified brought them that forenoon together ; 
that they were by each other's side as the tidings reached them of 
all the wonders which had transpired around the cross, and of the 
strange death which Jesus died. The resolution of both is promptly 
taken ; and it looks, certainly, as if taken with the knowledge of each 
other's purpose. Joseph goes at once boldly to Pilate, and cravea 
the body of Jesus. An ancient prophecy, of which he knew noth- 
ing—one that seemed, as Jesus died, most unlikely of accomplish- 



THE BURIAL. 773 

merit— Lad proclaimed that he was to make his grave with the rich. 
This rich man has a new sepulchre, wherein never man lay, which he 
had bought or got hewn out of the rock, with the idea, perhaps, that 
he might himself be the first to occupy it. It lies there close at hand, 
not many paces from the cross. He is resolved to open it, that it 
may receive, as its first tenant, the body of the Crucified. Nay, fur- 
ther ; as there are few, if any, now of Christ's known friends to un- 
dertake the task, he is resolved — his dignity, the sense of shame, the 
fear of the Jews, all forgotten — to put his own hands to the office of 
giving that body the most honorable sepulture that the time and 
circumstances can afford. 

Once assured, on the centurion's testimony, that it was even as 
Joseph said, Pilate at once gives the order that the body shall be 
committed into his hands. The centurion, bearing that order, returns 
to Golgotha. Joseph provides himself by the way with the clean 
white cloth in which to shroud the body. The soldiers, at their offi- 
cer's command, bear the bodies of the other two away, leaving that 
of Jesus still suspended on the cross. It is there when Joseph reaches 
the spot, to be dealt with as he likes. How quiet and how lonely the 
place, as the first preparations are made for the interment ! few to 
help, and none to interrupt. The crowd has all dispersed ; some half- 
dozen Galilean women alone remain. But is John not here? He 
had returned to Calvary, had seen but a little while before the thrust 
of the soldier's spear ; he knew that but a short time was left for dis- 
posing of the body. Is it at all likely that in such circumstances he 
should leave, and not wait to see the close ? Let us believe that 
though, with his accustomed modesty, he has veiled his presence, he 
was present standing with those Galilean women. They see, coming 
in haste, this Joseph of Arimathea, whom none of them had ever 
known as a disciple of their Master; they see the white linen cloth 
that he has provided ; they notice that the body is committed to his 
charge ; they watch with wonder as he puts forth his own hand to the 
taking down of the body. Their wonder grows as Nicodemus — also 
a stranger to them, whom they had never seen coming to Jesus — 
joins himself to Joseph ; not rudely and roughly, as the soldiers had 
dealt with the others, but gently and reverently handling the dead. 
As they lay the body on the ground, it appears that this new-comer, 
Nicodemus, has brought with him a mixture of powdered myrrh and 
aloes, about one hundred pounds' weight. The richest man in Jeru- 
salem could not have furnished more or better spicery for the burial 
of his dearest friend. It is evident that these two men have it in 
their heart, and are ready to put to their hands, to treat the dead 



774 THE LIFE OE CHKIST. 

with all due respect. Their fears disarmed, assured of the friendly 
purpose of those interposing thus, the Galilean women gather in 
around the pale and lifeless form. The white shroud is ready, the 
myrrh and the aloes are at hand, but who shall spread those spices 
on the funeral garment, and wrap it round the corpse to fit it for the 
burial ? This is a service, one of the last and the saddest which our 
poor humanity needs, which, as if by an instinct of nature, woman's 
gentle hand has in all ages and in all countries been wont to render 
to the dead ; and though the gospel narrative be silent here, we will 
not believe that it was otherwise at the cross ; we will not believe but 
that it was the tender hands of those loving women who had watched 
at Calvary from morning-tide till now, which offer their aid, and are 
permitted and honored to wipe from that mutilated form the bloody 
marks of dishonor which it wore, to swathe it with the pure linen 
robe, and wrap around the thorn-marked brow the napkin, so falsely 
deemed to be the last clothing of the dead. 

One thing alone is wanting, that the manner of the Jews in bury 
ing may be observed — a bier to lay the body on, to bear it to the 
sepulchre. There has been no time to get one, or it is felt that the 
distance is so short that it is not needed. That body has, however, 
the best bier of all — the hands of true affection, to lift it up and 
carry it across to the new tomb which waits to receive it. The feet 
let us assign to Joseph, the body to Nicodemus, and that regal head 
with those closed eyes, over which the shadows of the resurrection 
are already flitting, let us lay it on the breast of the beloved disciple. 
The brief path from the cross to the sepulchre is soon traversed. In 
silence and in deep sorrow they bear their sacred burden, and lay it 
gently down upon its clean, cold rocky bed. The last look of the 
dead is taken. The buriers reverently withdraw, the stone is rolled 
to the mouth of the sepulchre : separated from the living — Jesus 
rests with the dead— 









"At length the worst is o'er, and thou art laid 
Deep in thy darksome bed ; 
All still and cold behind yon dreary stone 
Thy sacred form is gone. 

Around those lips where peace and mercy hung 
The dew of death hath clung ; 
The dull earth o'er thee, and thy friends around, 
Thou sleep'st a silent corse, in funeral-raiment wound." 

The burial is over now, and we might depart ; but let us linger a 
little longer, and bestow a parting look on the persons and the place, 
the buriers and the burying-ground. The former have been few in 
aumber ; what they have to do, they must do quickly ; for the sun is 






THE BURIAL. 775 

down in the western sky when Joseph gets the order from Pilate ; 
and before it sets, before the great Sabbath begins, they must lay 
Jesus in the grave. Yet hurried as they have been, with all such 
honor as they can show, with every token of respect, have they laid 
that body in the tomb ; they have done all they could. The last service 
which Jesus ever needed at the hands of men it has been their privi- 
lege to render. And for the manner in which they have rendered it, 
shall we not honor them? Yes, verily, wherever this gospel of the 
kingdom shall be made known, what they thus did for the Lord's 
burial shall be told for a memorial of them ; and henceforth we shall 
forget of Joseph that hitherto he had concealed his discipleship, and 
acted as if he were a stranger to the Lord, seeing that, when Christ 
was in such a special sense a stranger on the earth, he opened his 
own new sepulchre to take him in ; and we shall forget it of Nicode- 
mus that it was by night he had come to Jesus, seeing that, upon 
this last sad day he came forth so openly, with his costly offering of 
myrrh and aloes, to embalm Christ for his burial. Of the Galilean 
women we have nothing to forget; but let this be the token where- 
with we shall remember them, that, the last at the cross and the first 
at the sepulchre, they were the latest at the grave : for Joseph has 
departed ; Nicodemus and the rest are gone ; but there, while the 
sun goes down, and the evening shadows deepen around, the very 
solitude and gloom of the place such as might have warned them 
away — there are Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to be seen sit- 
ting over against the sepulchre, unable to tear themselves from the 
spot, gazing through their tears at the place where the body of their 
Lord is laid. 

Let us now bestow a parting look upon the burying-ground. " In 
the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in that 
garden a sepulchre." Plant yourselves before that sepulchre, and 
look around. This is no place for graves ; here rise around you no 
memorials of the dead. You see but a single sepulchre, and that 
sepulchre in a garden. Strange mingling this of opposites, the 
garden of life and growth and beauty, circling the sepulchre of 
death, corruption, and decay. Miniature of the strange world we 
live in. What garden of it has not its own grave ? Y r our path may, 
for a time, be through flowers and fragrance; follow it far enough, it 
leads ever to a grave. But this sepulchre in this garden suggests 
other and happier thoughts. It was in a garden once of old — in 
Eden, that death had his first summons given, to find there his first 
prey, it is in a garden here at Calvary, that the last enemy of 
mankind has the death-blow given to him — that the great conqueror 



r 



776 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

is in his turn overcome. Upon that stone which they rolled to the 
mouth of the sepulchre, let us engrave the words, " O death, where 
is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be to God, 
which giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ." What a 
change it has made in the character and aspect of the grave, that our 
Saviour himself once lay in it ! He has stripped it of its terrors, and to 
many a weary one given it an attractive rather than a repulsive look 
"I heard a voice from heaven saying" — it needed a voice from heav- 
en to assure us of the truth — "Blessed are the dead who die in the 
Lord." To such the grave is, indeed, a bed of blessed rest. Buried 
with Jesus, they repose till the hour of the great awakening cometh, 
when with him they shall arise to that newness of life over which no 
shadow of death shall ever pass. 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 776a 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 

The concluding division, or Part VI, of the surveying of our Lord's 
earthly life is now entered upon. The material naturally divides 
itself into three Studies: the first covering the event of the resurrec- 
tion and the early appearances in Judea; the second comprising the 
appearances in Galilee; and the third treating the closing appearances 
in Judea and the ascension. 

Without question the New Testament regards the resurrection of 
Christ as of supreme value for the establishment of Christianity. The 
great care observed in the Gospels to authenticate the event, as well 
as the place which it holds in the early discourses and letters of the 
apostles, is in evidence. 

It is clear from the Gospel accounts that the apostles and women 
friends of Jesus were so stunned by his death with its terrible attendant 
circumstances that his predictions of his resurrection were for the time 
being utterly forgotten, and no expectation of the event remained in 
their minds. This makes the proof of this great fact all the stronger. 

In the present Study this wonderful line of appearances of the risen 
Christ passes through the first Judean cycle, covering two Sundays and 
six out of the ten clearly recorded appearances of Christ according as 
they are usually reckoned. 

There is a most striking distinction to be noted between Christ's 
outward personal association with those who were intimate with him 
before the resurrection compared with his meetings with them after 
that event. Dr. Hanna seeks to show that the period of forty days 
through which the Saviour's disclosures of himself extended, taken 
in connection with the brief and physically most reserved manifesta- 
tion of himself, was designed and fitted precisely to enable the fol- 
lowers of our Lord to hold together in their faith the two factors of his 
humanity and his divinity. Had he entered during the forty days 
into the same familiar relations with them as those existing before his 
passion, they would have been impressed with the human element to 
the sacrifice or prejudice of the divine. On the other hand, had he 
crowded the proofs of his resurrection state into a day or two and then 
ascended, they would have been led to emphasize the divine side of 
his nature to the exclusion or practical loss of the human. But by the 
course which he observed he enabled them to hold in their feeling and 
their faith the perfect union of his true humanity and his glorious 
divinity. 



7766 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. , 

PART VI. FORTY DAYS AND THE ASCENSION. 
Study 23. Resurrection and First Appearances in Judea. 

(1) The situation before the event 777-780 

a. The wonderful Sabbath stillness 777 

b. No expectation of the resurrection 778 

c. Love lives on even when faith dies 778 

d. The chief priests and rulers have fear of Christ even though dead . . . .778 

e . They arrange for sealing the tomb and setting a guard 779, 780 

(2) The event' of the resurrection 781-783 

a. No one saw the resurrection itself 781 

b. The angel's announcement to the women 781 

c. The event stopped the mouths of Christ's adversaries 782 

d. Confirmed Christ's words 782, 783 

e. Put the seal of divine acceptance on Christ's whole work 783 

(3) Importance to Christianity 783-785 

a. The great foundation fact 783, 784 

b. The conquest of death 784, 785 

(4) Appearance to Mary Magdalene 786-794 

a. Minor discrepancies in Gospel accounts 786, 787 

b. John's account , 787 

c. Mary Magdalene not the sinful woman 787 

d. Her devotion 788, 789 

e. Christ reveals himself to her < 790-794 

(5) Appearance to the other women 797 

a. Revealed by his salutation 797 

b. Held by the feet and worshipped 797 

c. Report given to the apostles 797 

(6) Appearance to the two on the way to Emmaus 794-802 

a. Toward evening of the first Sunday 794 

b. Two unknown disciples 794-795 

c. Yet having a great heart need 796-802 

(7) Appearance to Peter 803 

a. On the first Sunday afternoon 803 

6. Reported that evening 803 

(8) Appearance to the ten in the upper room 802-811 

a. The two return from Emmaus 802, 803 

b. The apostles and others in the upper room 803 

c. Jesus appears among them 803, 804 

d. Instructions and developments 805-811 

(9) Appearance to the eleven, and Thomas convinced 811-819 

a. On the second Sunday evening 811 

b. Possible reason for Thomas' absence the week before. 811, 812 

c. Nature of his unbelief 812-816 

d. Mixed state of faith and feeling of Thomas when the evening 

came 816, 817 

e. Christ's appearance and words to Thomas 817 

/. The purified and exalted faith of Thomas 817 

g. His adoring and fervent words 817 

h. Concluding thoughts and reflections 817-819 






THE FORTY DAYS 

AFTER 

OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION, 



The Resurrection.* 

We left Mary Magdalene and the other Mary keeping their lonely 
watch over against the sepulchre till the sun of Friday sets. At its 
setting, Saturday, the great Sabbath of the passover, begins. Such 
a Sabbath never dawned upon this world before or since. All things 
wear an outward look of quiet in Jerusalem. A great calm, a deeper 
than Sabbath stillness, has followed the stir and excitement of those 
strange scenes at Golgotha. Crowds of silent worshippers fill as 
usual the courts of the temple ; and all goes on, at the hours of the 
morning and evening sacrifice, as it had done for hundreds of years 
gone by. But can those priests, who minister within the Holy Place, 
gaze without some strange misgivings upon the rent in the veil from 
top to bottom, which yesterday they had seen so strangely made, 
and which they scarce had time imperfectly to repair ? Can they think 
without dismay of that rude uncovering of all the hidden mysteries 
of the most Holy Place, which they had witnessed ? Among the 
crowds of worshippers without, there are friends and followers of 
Jesus. They would have been here had nothing happened to their 
Master the day before, and they are here now, for by keeping away 
they might draw suspicion upon themselves ; but what heart have 
they for the services of the sanctuary? They have just had all their 
brightest earthly hopes smitten to the dust ; and so prostrate are 
they beneath the stroke, that they cannot even recall to memory that 
but a few months before, Jesus had, more than once, distinctly told 
them that he must go up to Jerusalem, and suffer many things ol 
the elders and chief priests, and be killed, and be raised again the 
Matt. 26:62-66; 28:1-6. 



778 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

third day. No writer of a fictitious story, no framer of religious 
myths, had he previously put into Christ's lips such distinct foretell- 
in gs of his death and resurrection, would have attributed to his follow- 
ers such an entire forgetfulness of these predictions, such an utter 
prostration of all faith and hope, as that which the evangelists de- 
scribe as corning upon all our Lord's disciples immediately after his 
death, lasting till the most extraordinary means were taken to re- 
move them, and yielding slowly then. Yet, after all, is it not true to 
human nature, that upon the minds and hearts of those simple, rude, 
uncultivated men and women, filled as they had been with other and 
quite different expectations, the shock of such a shameful death, 
coming in such a way upon their Master, was so sudden and so stun- 
ning, that all power of forming a new conception of their Master's 
character, and taking up a new faith in him, was gone ; the power 
even of remembering what he had said about himself beforehand for 
the season paralyzed? 

But love lives on, even where faith dies out, among those discon- 
solate and utterly hopeless friends and followers of our Lord. While 
the two Marys had remained throughout the preceding day before 
the sepulchre, others of those Galilean women had hastened to occupy 
the short space between the burial and the sunset, in beginning their 
preparations for the embalming of their Master's body. And these, 
with the two Marys, are waiting now, not without impatience; for 
their hearts, not in the temple services, have gone where they have 
seen him laid — till the sunset, the close of the Sabbath, enables them 
to have all the needed wrappings, and spices, and ointments prepar- 
ed, so that when the third morning dawns they may go out to Golgo- 
tha, to finish there at leisure what Joseph and Nicodemus had more 
hurriedly and imperfectly attempted, before they laid Jesus in the 
sepulchre. 

But how, throughout this intervening Sabbath, fares it with the 
chief priests and rulers ? Are they quite at ease ; content and happy ; 
satisfied with, if not glorying in, their success? They have got rid 
of this obnoxious man ; he is dead and buried. What fear can there 
be of him now ? What risk or danger to them, or to their supremacy, 
can come out of his grave ? May they not bury all their apprehen- 
sions in that closed sepulchre? No ; a ghastly fear comes in to mar 
the joy of a gratified revenge. They dread that dead man still ; he 
rules their spirits from his sepulchre. They would not cross Herod's 
threshold the day before, lest they should be defiled. They could not 
boar the thought that Jesus should hang suspended on the cross 
throughout the Sabbath-day; it would disturb, it would desecrate 






THE RESURRECTION. 779 

the services of the hoi j day, the Holy Place. But they scruple not to 
desecrate the Sabbath by their jealous fears ; by their secret councils ; 
by their plannings to prevent a future, dreaded danger. And so, no 
sooner is the Sabbath over, than they hasten to the governor, saying 
to him : " Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet 
alive, After three days I will rise again." They had themselves heard 
him, at the very beginning of his ministry, say publicly : " Destroy 
this temple, and in three days I will raise it again." They had heard 
him at a later period say: "An evil and adulterous generation 
seeketh after a sign ; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the 
sign of the prophet Jonas: for as Jonas was three days and three 
nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and 
three nights in the heart of the earth." Was it to these vague and 
general sayings of our Lord that the rulers now referred? It is 
more likely that they had in view some of those more recent and 
move explicit declarations of Jesus to his own disciples, such as the 
one already quoted, or such as that other and still more explicit one, 
when he took his disciples apart by the way, as they were going up 
to Jerusalem, and said to them, " Behold, we go up to Jerusalem ; 
and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests, and un- 
to the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, and shall de- 
liver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify him : 
and the third day he shall rise again." What more natural than 
that the betrayer himself, to whose act such special allusion was thus 
made, should, in some of his communications with the rulers, have 
repeated to them those memorable words? They now remember, 
while the disciples themselves forget. They fear, while the disciples 
have ceased to hope. When first reported to them, they had mock- 
ed at the unmeaning words ; but now that so much of the prophecy 
has been accomplished, they begin to dread lest somehow or other 
the remainder of it should also be fulfilled. As yet all was safe ; it 
was not till the third day that he was to rise again. During that 
Sabbath-day the body of the Crucified was secure enough in the sep- 
ulchre; the very sanctity of the day a sufficient guard against any 
attempt to invade the tomb. But instant means must be taken that 
thereafter there be no tampering with the place of burial. No night- 
guard could they get so good as a company of Koman soldiers whose 
iron rule of discipline imposed death upon the sentinel who slept at 
his post. Such guard they could get stationed at the sepulchre on- 
ly under the governor's sanction. " Command, therefore," they said 
tc Pilate, " that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest 
his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the 



780 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

people, He is risen from the dead : so the last error shall be worse 
than the first." Little heeding either the first or the last error, hav- 
ing no sympathy with their idle fears abont the rifling of the sepul- 
chre, in no good humor either with himself or with the rulers, yet, 
since he had gone so far to please them, not caring to refuse their 
last request, Pilate complies. "Ye have a watch," he says; 'a de- 
tachment of my soldiers placed at your disposal during the feast, 
use it as you please ; go your way, and, with its help, make the sep- 
ulchre of that poor innocent Nazarene you got me to crucify, as sure 
as ye can.' And they went their way. They passed a cord across 
the stone which filled the entrance into the sepulchre, and fastened 
it at each end to the adjoining rock with the sealing clay, so that 
the stone could not be removed and replaced, however carefully, in 
its first position, without leaving behind a mark of the disturbance. 
And they placed the sentinels, with the strict command that they 
were to suffer no man in the darkness to meddle with that sepulchre ; 
and thus, securely guarded, the dead body of the Redeemer reposes 
The darkness deepens round the sepulchre, the sentinels kindle 
their night-lamps, and pace to and fro before it. The midnight hour 
has passed ; it is yet dark. The day has but begun to dawn, when 
those women, whose wakeful love sends them forth on their early 
errand, leave the holy city to go out to Calvary to complete there 
the interrupted embalming. They are already near the spot, when a 
difficulty, not thought of till then, occurs to them. And they said 
among themselves, Who shall roll away the stone from the door of 
the sepulchre? That stone which they had seen two nights before 
closely fitted into its place, was too large, too firmly embedded in its 
place, for their weak hands to move, and at this hour, and at that 
spot, what aid of stronger hands can they obtain ? Another difficul- 
ty there was ; but of it happily they were ignorant, or it might have 
stopped their movement altogether. Of that sealing of the stone, of 
that guard planted the preceding day before the sepulchre, they had 
heard nothing, else they might have put to one another the further 
question, How, with such guard before it, shall we ever get access to 
the grave ? It is as they are communing with one another by the 
way, that the earth quakes, and the angel descends from heaven, and 
rolls the stone back from the door of the sepulchre, and, having 
done this service for the embalmers, sits down upon it, waiting their 
approach. Was it then that the great event of that morning took 
place? Was it as the angel's hand rolled back the stone, and open- 
ed the entrance of the tomb, that the Great Redeemer of mankind 
awoke, arose, and stepped forth from his temporary rest among the 







"He is not Here, for He is Risen. 



THE RESURRECTION. 781 

dead ? It is not said so. The keepers did not witness the resurreo- 
tion. They saw the angel, the light of his countenance, the snowy 
radiance of his raiment, and for fear of him they became as dead 
men. But they saw not the Lord himself come forth. The angel 
himself may not have witnessed the resurrection. He did not say 
he had. He speaks of it as an ev*ent already past. It may not 
have been as a spectator or minister to his Lord, in the act of rising 
from the dead, that he was sent down from heaven. The Lord oi 
life needed not that service which he came to render. Through that 
stone door he could have passed as easily as he passed afterwards 
through other doors which barred not his entrances nor his exits. 
Altogether secret, the exact time and manner of the event unnoticed 
and unknown was that great rising from the dead. The clearest and 
amplest proof was afterwards given of the fact that, some time be- 
tween sunset of the last and sunrise of the first day of the week, the 
resurrection had taken place ; but it pleased not the Lord who then 
arose to do so under the immediate eye or inspection of any human 
witness. 

Alarmed by the quaking of the ground beneath their feet, be- 
wildered by the strange light which is seen streaming forth from be- 
side the sepulchre, the women enter the garden, approach the sepuk 
chre, gather courage as they see that the stone is already rolled 
away, but might have sunk again in terror as they looked at him 
who sat upon that stone, had he not prevented their fears by saying 
to them, in tones, let us believe, full of soothing power : " Fear not 
ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified" — 'I know 
the errand that you come on. I know that it is love to the Crucified 
which brings you, thus early, to what was once his grave ; and 1 
have tidings of him that such love as yours will delight to hear. 
True, all that labor of yours about these spices and ointments is lost ; 
you will find here nobody to embalm. But not lost is this visit to the 
sepulchre; for to you first, among all his followers, have I to tell: 
"He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place 
where the Lord lay;"' and he led them into the sepulchre. 

"Come, see the place where the Lord lay." How little did the 
angel who first uttered these words, and heard the echo of them die 
away among the recesses of the rocky garden — how little, perhaps, 
did he think that the invitation which he thus gave • to those few 
trembling women who stood before him, would be conveyed down 
through all after times, and be borne to the ears of millions upon 
millions of the followers of Jesus Christ. And yet it has been 
even so, and in the course of its long descent and wide circula- 



782 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

tion, it has reached even unto us. Let us listen to and obey it 
Come, let us look at the place where the Lord once lay, and from 
which on that third morning he arose. 

We cannot indeed literally accept the angelic invitation, and go 
and look into the empty sepulchre. The hand of time, and in this 
instance the still rougher hands of the devotee and of the infidel, 
have wrought such changes in that sacred neighborhood, that the 
exact site of the holy sepulchre cannot be identified. But though we 
may not be able to plant our footsteps on the very ground that the 
trembling women occupied, or follow them as, angel led, they passed 
into the deserted tomb, yet in thought we may still bend over the 
place where the Lord once lay. 

As we do so, let us reflect upon the proofs of the divine mission 
of the Redeemer afforded by his resurrection from the grave. Evi- 
dence enough had been afforded by our Lord himself, during his life- 
time, of his divine character and authority. The words he spake, the 
works he did, proclaimed him to be the Son of the Highest. But 
sufficient as it was to convince the candid, that evidence had not been 
sufficient to silence the cavillers. His words were misunderstood and 
misinterpreted; his miracles, though not denied, were attributed to 
Satanic agency. It was as a blasphemer that he was put to death. 
But his resurrection appears at least to have had this effect, it stopped 
the mouths of his adversaries. There might be a few among the more 
credulous of them who accepted the clumsy tale that the chief priests 
tried to circulate about his disciples coming by night and taking the 
body away. But loudly and publicly as, both in the heart of Jeru- 
salem and elsewhere, the apostles proclaimed this fact in the pres- 
ence of the rulers themselves, it does not appear that its reality was 
ever openly challenged, or that any such attempt was made to explain 
it away as had been made regarding other miracles wrought by the 
Saviour's hands. If it failed to convince, it succeeded at least in 
silencing those who would, if they could, have dealt with it in a like 
manner. 

It had indeed the force of a double miracle. Alone, and by itself, 
the rising of Jesus from the dead most fully authenticated the claims 
he had put forth. Had the Son of Mary not been all that he had 
declared himself to be, never would such an exercise of the Divine 
power have been put forth on his behalf. But more than this, Christ 
had publicly perilled his reputation as the Christ of God, on the 
occurrence of this event. "When challenged to give some sign in 
support of his pretensions, it was to his future resurrection from the 
dead, and to it alone, that he appealed. Often, as we have seen, and 



THE RESURRECTION. 783 

that in terms incapable of misconstruction, had our Lord foretold his 
resurrection. It carried thus along with it a triple proof of the divin- 
ity of our Lord's mission. It was the fulfilment of a prophecy, as 
well as the working of a miracle; that miracle wrought, and that 
prophecy fulfilled, in answer to a solemn and confident appeal made 
beforehand by Christ to this event as the crowning testimony to his 
Messiahship. 

But not yet have we exhausted the testimony which the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus embodies. He spoke of that resurrection as the rais- 
ing of himself by himself. " Destroy this temple, and in three days 
I will raise it up. I lay down my life, that I may take it again. I 
have power to lay it down; I have power to take it again." An 
assumption by Jesus Christ of a power proper to the Creator alone ; 
a clothing of himself with the high prerogative of the giver and tho 
restorer of life. His actual resurrection, did it not in the most solemn 
manner ratify that assumption, convincing us by an instance of the 
highest kind, that whatsoever thing the Father doeth, the same doeth 
the Son likewise? 

But further still — and it is this which attaches such importance 
to this incident in the history of our Kedeemer, and causes it to be 
spoken of in the New Testament Scriptures as standing in such close 
connection with all our dearest hopes as to the life beyond the grave — 
in the resurrection of the Saviour, the seal of the Divine acceptance 
and approval was put upon that great work of service and of sacri- 
fice, of atonement and of obedience in our room and stead, which 
Jesus finished on the cross. The expression and embodiment of that 
acceptance and approval in a visible act, an outward and palpable 
incident, give an aid and a security to our faith in Christ for our 
acceptance with God, far beyond that which any bare announcement 
in words could possibly have conveyed. Can we wonder, then, at the 
prominence given, in the teachings and writings of the apostles of 
our Lord, to an event so full of convincing evidence, so rich in spirit- 
ual instruction and comfort? To be a witness to this great event 
was held — as the election of Matthias informs us — to be the special 
function of the apostolic office. It was to this event that Peter 
referred at large in his discourse to the multitude on the day of Pen- 
tecost. "This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are wit- 
nesses." Questioned, a short time afterwards, before the Sanhedrim, 
as to the earliest of the apostolic miracles, "Be it known," said 
Peter, " unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the uame 
of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised 
from the dead, even by him doth this man stand before you whole." 



784 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

When Paul addressed the men of Athens, this was the one supernat- 
ural incident to which in the way of attestation, he referred: "God 
hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world by that 
man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance, in 
that he hath raised him from the dead." I have but to refer to the 
fifteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, to remind you 
of the place and prominence given to the event by the great apostle 
of the Gentiles : " If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, 
and your faith is a] so vain." 

From the first, it was to that crowning miracle of Christianity 
that its teachers made appeal. And now once more, in our own 
times, it is by that event that we desire that the entire question of 
the supernaturalism of our religion should be decided; for if that 
event be true, then any, then all other miracles are at least credible, 
for where among them shall a greater than this be found ? If that 
event be true, then upon it does the entire fabric of our Christian 
faith securely rest ; for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, 
then are we prepared along with this, and as harmonizing with this, 
to believe all that the Scriptures have taught us of the glory oj 
Christ's person, as one with, and equal to the Father; all that they 
have taught us of the design of his life and death among us, as the 
Iledeemer of our souls from death — the giver, the infuser, the nour- 
ish er, the maturer of that eternal life which is for our souls in him. 
Let us then be devoutly grateful for it > that our faith in him — in 
knowledge of whom, in union with whom standeth our eternal life- 
has such a solid foundation of fact to rest upon — a foundation so 
firmly embedded among all those other foundations upon which our 
knowledge of the past reposes, that to unsettle, to overturn it, yon 
must unsettle, must overturn them all. 

" Come, see the place where the Lord lay," that you may contem- 
plate him, the one and only instance which this world hath witness- 
ed of the last enemy, Death, being fairly met — met in his own terri- 
tory, triumphed over in his own domain, by the use of his own weap- 
ons. That grim, inexorable tyrant, wealth has never bribed, tears 
have never softened, beauty has never moved as he made his unfal- 
tering approach, and struck his unerring blow. To and fro, wide 
over the vast field of humanity, has that sheer, cold scythe been ever 
swapng, and generation after generation has it laid low in the dust. 
Two only out of the many millions of our race — two in olden time 
were snatched away before the stroke of the destroyer came upon 
them, and passed away without tasting death. But the translation 
of Enoch and Elijah was no victory over death; they never met, they 



THE RESURRECTION. 785 



never grappled with this foe ; they were withdrawn from the battle- 
field before the day of conflict came. Some there were, too, in after 
times, who, subject for a season to the dominion of death, were de- 
livered from its sway; but neither was theirs the victory, for they 
bad to return again, and bow once more beneath the yoke of the 
great conqueror. The widow's son, the ruler's daughter, and Laza- 
rus whom Jesus loved, lie low as others in the caverns of the dead. 
One alone of human form ever grappled with that strong wrestle* 
Death, and cast him from him overcome. His way to conquest lay 
through brief submission. Like others, he descended into the dark 
and dreary prison-house. The grave opened to receive him. He 
seemed to have passed away as the multitudes who had gone before. 
But death and the grave never received such a visitant into their 
silent and vast domains. He approached the throne of the tyrant, to 
wrench the sceptre of empire from his hand. In bursting, as he did, 
the barriers of the grave, it was no mere respite that he obtained for 
himself, but a full and final victory. He bade adieu that morning to 
the sepulchre for ever. He left no trophy behind ; nothing of his in 
the hands of death; nothing but that empty sepulchre to tell that he 
had once, and for a short season, been under the hold of the destroy- 
er. Even had this been a solitary conquest, though the sepulchre of 
Jesus were to remain for ever as the only one from which the tenant 
came forth alive, to return to it no more — still would we draw near to 
muse upon this one triumph of humanity over the last enemy. 

But we have all a nearer, a more special interest in this deserted 
tomb of Jesus Christ. His was no solitary, isolated victory over the 
grave. For us he died, and for us he rose again. Firm and fast as 
the grave now seems to hold the buried generations of our race, it is 
now doomed, as a fruit of Christ's resurrection, to relax its grasp, and 
yield them up again. Empty as was Joseph's sepulchre when tho 
angel stood before it and invited the women to enter, so empty shall 
one day be every grave of earth, when another angel shall sound his 
trumpet, and it shall ring through all the regions of the dead, and stir 
all to life again. Blessed was that morning which dawned vipon the 
empty tomb at Calvary, but more blessed to us shall that other morn- 
ing be which shall dawn upon all the emptied graves of earth, if oiAj 
now we live in Christ ; if at death we sleep in Jesus ; if at that res- 
urrection we be numbered with those who shall share the resurrec- 
tion of the just. 



J,ffc of Christ. 



50 



786 THE LIFE OF CHPvIST. 

It. 

Appearance to Mary Magdalene* 

In relating the incidents of the resurrection, St. Matthew tells us 
that it was Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, who, as the first 
day of the week began to dawn, went out to the sepulchre. St. Mark 
mentions Salome as having accompanied them. St. Luke introduces 
the additional name of Joanna. St. John speaks of Mary Magda- 
lene, and of her only. On the supposition that a number of those 
women who came with Jesus from Galilee had agreed to complete as 
early as possible the embalming of his body, and that they had either 
started together from the city, or, being in different parts of it the 
night before, had fixed to meet at early dawn at the sepulchre, we 
can readily enough understand that each of the four independent 
narrators might name one or more of them without specifying the 
others. Looking, however, a little more closely into the four sepa- 
rate accounts, we notice that, according to Matthew, the women on 
their arrival found the stone removed from the entrance of the sepul- 
chre, and an angel sitting upon it, who invited them to enter and look 
at the place where the Lord had lain. Mark, making no allusion to 
any vision of an angel without, says that they passed into the sepul- 
chre, and, on entering, saw "a young man sitting at the right side, 
clothed in a long white garment," who addressed to them nearly the 
same words which Matthew puts into the mouth of the angel seeD 
sitting upon the stone. Luke tells us that, finding the stone rolled 
away, they entered in and found the sepulchre empty, and as they 
stood perplexed at the discovery, " behold, two men stood by them 
in shining garments," and spoke to them in terms and in a tone dif- 
fering considerably from that attributed to the single angel by the 
first two evangelists. It appears again, from the narrative of John, 
that Mary Magdalene had seen no angel, had heard at least no an- 
nouncement that the Lord was actually alive, when she hurried off 
from the sepulchre in search of Peter and John. What are we to 
make of these discrepancies ? Was it sometimes one and sometimes 
two angels that appeared; were some eyes opened and some eyes 
shut to the angelic visions ? Was it one visit, or two, or more, by 
the same or different groups of women, which were paid to the sepul- 
chre? Various attempts to answer such questions have been made; 
various suppositions have been framed, the adoption of which, it has 

* John 20 : 1-18. 



APPEAEANCE TO MARY MAGDALENE. 787 

been thought, would relieve the different accounts from conflicting 
with one another; various modes of interlacing them, so as to form 
out of them a continuous and consistent narrative, have been present- 
ed. If it cannot be said that they have all absolutely failed, it must 
be said that not one of them is entirely satisfactory. We cannot 
doubt that if all the minor and connecting links were in our hands, 
we should be able to explain what now seems to be obscure, to har- 
monize what now seems to be conflicting; but in the absence of such 
knowledge, we must be content to take what each writer tells us, and 
regard it as the broken fragment of a whole, all the parts of which 
are not in our hands, so that we can put them connectedly together. 
But is not this fragmentary character of each of these four separate 
accounts just what we might have expected, considering the time and 
manner of the events narrated — the obscure light, the women com 
ing, it may have been singly, or in different groups by different routes, 
the surprise, the terror, the running in and out, to and from the city — 
all this within the compass of an hour or two ? Which one of the 
spectators or actors in these busy and broken movements, if asked 
afterwards to detail what occurred, but might have given an account 
of it differing from that of all the others ? And if any two of these 
independent sources of information were applied to or made use of, 
how readily might apparent contradictions emerge upon the face of 
the narratives that were afterwards preserved. We do not know 
from what particular sources Matthew, Mark, and Luke derived their 
information. This special interest, however, attaches to the narra- 
tive of John — it is partly that of an eye-witness, and partly drawn, 
we cannot doubt, from what was told him by Mary Magdalene her- 
self. Overlooking the part taken by all the other women, John con- 
fines himself exclusively to her. Even as our Lord himself singled 
her out from among the women who had ministered to him, to make 
to her his first appearance after his resurrection, so does the beloved 
disciple speak of her alone while he details to us the incidents of 
that wonderful manifestation. 

We feel as if a great injustice had been done to Mary Magdalene, 
in identifying her with the woman who was a sinner, who anointed 
the Lord's feet with ointment, and wiped them with the hairs of 
her head. The name of that woman is not mentioned in the record 
of the incident in which she took so prominent a part. The incident 
occurred not in Magdala but at Nain. It was after Christ had left 
Nain that the first mention of this Mary meets us in the gospel nar- 
rative: "And it came to pass afterwards, that he went throughout 
every city and village, preaching and showing the glad tidings of the 



788 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

kingdom of God; and the twelve were with him, and certain women, 
which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called 
Magdalene, ont of whom went seven devils, and Joanna the wife of 
Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, which min- 
istered unto him of their substance." Named thus along with one 
whose husband held an important office in Herod's household, named 
as one of those who ministered to our Lord of their substance, Mary 
Magdalene does not appear to have been a woman of a low or poor 
condition. Neither have we any right to ground upon the fact that 
seven devils had been cast out of her, the conclusion that she had 
been a woman of depraved or dissolute habits. Satanic possession 
carried then no more evidence along with it of previous immorality, 
than insanity would do now among ourselves. 

But whoever, whatever this Mary was, she was, as we have already 
seen, one of the latest at the sepulchre on the evening of the burial, 
and now she is one of the earliest at that sepulchre on the morning 
of the resurrection. Perhaps, more eager than the rest, she had hur- 
ried on before, and entered the garden alone. A quick glance, that 
waited not to catch even the sight of the angel's form, had shown her 
that the entrance was open, and the sepulchre empty. Overwhelmed 
with sorrow at the sight; waiting not to hear the angel's intimation 
that He had risen; leaping at once to the conclusion that hostile 
hands had rifled the sacred tomb, her troubled fancy picturing to her 
the indignities to which that form, beloved even in its lifelessness, 
might have been subjected — Mary hurries back to the city. She 
seeks the house to which John had carried the mother of our Lord. 
She finds there both John and that other apostle, whom a strange 
attraction has drawn now to John's side. She has but breath enough 
to say, " They have taken away the Lord, and we know not where 
they have laid him." Her eagerness of alarm passes, by sympathy, 
into the hearts of the two apostles. They arise to run out together 
to the sepulchre. John's lighter footstep, quickened by his more 
ardent, more unburdened love, carries him soonest to the spot ; but, 
at the entrance, his deep and reverential spirit holds him back in 
awe. He stops, and bends, and looks into the grave. Peter, of 
slower step, and still laboring, it may have been, under the burden of 
self-reproach, is behind John in the race; but, bolder or more impet- 
uous, he stops not at the door, but, passing John, goes at once into 
the sepulchre. He draws his brother apostle after him, the one never 
dreaming of the influence he thus exerts, the other as little thinking 
of the influence he obeys. Both are now within, and have leisure to 
look round upon the place. There the linen clothes are lying, with 



APPEARANCE TO MARY MAGDALENE. 789 

which Joseph and Nicodenms had swathed the body, and there, not 
loosely flung upon them in a disordered heap, but carefully folded up 
in a pb,ce by itself, lies that napkin which Mary herself may have 
helped to bind around the thorn-marked brow. Who had arranged 
them thus ? Was it the hand of the great Sleeper himself, on his 
awakening within the tomb ? or was it some angel's hand that took 
the death garments as they dropped from around the risen one, and 
thus disposed them? Whoever did it, there had been no haste; all 
had been done calmly, collectedly. Neither earthly friends nor earth- 
ly foes had done it : the one would not have stripped the garments 
from the body ; the other would have been at no pains so carefully 
to arrange and deposit them. Peter, as he looks, is amazed, but his 
amazement shapes itself into no connected thought ; he departs won- 
dering in himself at that which had come to pass. John's quieter 
and deeper reflection suggests at once the idea that what has taken 
place is not a removal, but a reanimation of the body. An incipient 
faith in the resurrection forms within his breast ; a faith grounded, 
not as it might have been, and should have been, on what he had 
already read or heard — for as yet neither he nor any of the apostles 
knew from the Scripture, nor believed from Christ's own word, that 
he must rise again from the dead — but grounded simply on what he 
saw, and especially upon the singular condition which the interior of 
the sepulchre displayed. That rising faith John kept to himself; he 
never boasted that he was the first of all the twelve to believe in the 
resurrection. Perhaps his first public mention of the fact was when, 
so many years afterwards, he sat down to write that gospel which 
bears his name. 

The brief inspection of the empty sepulchre over — there being 
nothing more to see or learn — John and Peter return silent and sad 
to their own home. Mary Magdalene had followed them, as best 
she could, in the running out to the sepulchre ; but she does not join 
them in their return. Two evenings before, (when all but she and 
the other Mary had left the tomb into which she had seen the 
body borne for burial,) she had clung to it to the last, and this morn- 
ing, she clings to it still. The Master whom she had lost had ren- 
dered her the greatest of services ; had been to her the kindest and 
best of friends. Her grateful love had clung to him while living; 
and now this love, living in her sorrow, makes her cling, even when 
John has loft it, to the spot where in death he had reposed. Mary 
Magdalene, standing alone weeping thus before the empty sepulchre, 
presents herself to our eye as the saddest and most inconsolable of 
all the mourners for the Crucified. As she weeps, she stoops to take 



790 THE LIFE OF GHEIST. 

another look into the deserted place. She sees a sight that might 
well have diverted her from her grief — two angels sitting, the one at 
the head, the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. 
They saj to her, "Woman, why weepest thou?" Did you ever read 
of a more absorbing grief than that she, who was addressed thus by 
angels, should have no surprise, no astonishment to spare ; but, as if 
unheeding who they were that spoke to her, should, out of the depths 
of her engrossing sorrow, only be able to repeat what she had said 
to Peter and John, varying the phrase a little — claiming a closer 
property in the departed — "Because they have taken away my Lord, 
and I know not where they have laid him." And she turns away, 
even from an interview with angels, from converse with those who 
may have had as their purpose in putting to her that question, to 
tell her about her risen Lord. She turns away even from them, 
to weep out, without further interruption, her most bitter grief. 

But now, from other lips, the same question, " Woman, why weep- 
est thou ?" salutes her ear. She sees, but scarcely notices, the person 
who thus speaks to her. He is not directly before her, and she cares 
not to turn, or make any minute scrutiny of his person. Even had 
she done so, seeing him through the veil of dropping tears, she might 
have failed to recognise him. She cares as little, in fact, about who 
this speaker is, as she had cared about who those angels were. 
Taking him to be one who did not need to be told why she wept, 
who must know all about what had happened — the gardener of the 
place — she says to him, in the simplest, most artless way, "Sir, if 
thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I 
will take him away." She is willing even to believe that it was with 
no unkindly purpose he had been removed. Only let her know where 
he is; and, all forgetful how unfit her weak hands were for such a 
task, she says, " I will take him away." ' If it be an offence that he 
lies here in this rich man's tomb, so near the holy city, I will bear him 
away to some remoter burial-place, where he may lie in peace, and 
where I may go and weep at will over his grave.' 

Jesus saith unto her, " Mary." The old familiar voice ! It can be 
only He who names her so. Instantly — fully — the revelation of his 
living presence bursts upon her. She turns, and forgetting all about 
the new strange circumstances in which she sees him, as if the former 
days of their familiar intercourse had returned, she says, " Babboni !" 
and stretches forth her hands to him. Jesus stops the movement. 
" Touch me not," he says, " for I am not yet ascended to my Father ; 
but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father 
and your Father, and to my God and your God." This check upon 



APPEARANCE TO MARY MAGDALENE. 791 

the ardor of Mary's affectionate approach in the first moments of 
r icognition, we can only understand by reflecting upon the object of 
our Lord's sojourn upon the earth for the forty days after the resur- 
roction. 

There is a mystery which hangs around this singular period in 
the life of our Redeemer. Why did he tarry so long upon the earth, 
wIipu his work appeared to have been finished? What peculiar 
service did that keeping empty so long his seat at his Father's right 
hand render to his church and people ? During the first eight days, 
on the first and last of which alone he showed himself in Jerusalem ; 
was he treading unseen the streets of the holy city, or haunting the 
household of the loved family of Bethany ? Those midnight hours ; 
did they see him once again amid the dark shadows of Gethsemane, 
praying now, not that the cup might be taken from him, but that the 
fruits of this bygone passion might be gathered in ? The Sabbaths 
of these days ; did they see him entering again the temple, passing 
behind the rent veil into the holy of holies, quenching with his unseen 
hand, and that for ever, the fire that had burned above the mercy- 
seat ? During the weeks which followed, was he wandering an un- 
seen spectator over the scenes of his earthly ministry; revisiting 
Nazareth, reentering Capernaum, where most of his mighty works 
had been done, looking in with kindly eye upon that nobleman's 
family, all of whom had believed in him ; going out to Cana, casting 
a passing glance at the dwelling in which the first of his miracles had 
been performed ; lingering for a moment by the gate of the little city 
of Nain, blessing once more, as he passed, the widow and her recov- 
ered child? 

It is an idle task, perhaps, for fancy to picture where or how 
those forty days were spent. But it is not an unprofitable question 
for us to put to ourselves, what ends could his lingering so long on 
earth have served ? It cannot be supposed that the mere object of 
affording proof enough that he was still alive, would have detained 
him here so long. That could have been done in two days as well as 
in forty. Besides, had that been the main object of his delay, why 
did he not appear oftener in a more open and public manner than he 
did ? Neither can it be imagined, that it was for the purpose of con- 
tinued and enlarged intercourse with his disciples. The fewness and 
shortness of his interviews with them preclude that belief. He was 
seen by them but ten times in all; five of those appearances occur- 
ring on the day of his resurrection ; and four of them, those to Mary, 
to Peter, to James, to the two disciples, having more of a private 
than of a public character. Out of the forty days there were but six 



792 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

on which lie held intercourse with any human being, and in those six 
days he did not give more than as many hours to fellowship with 
those to whom he showed himself. How brief, too, generally, and 
abrupt the meetings that made up the hours which were so employ- 
ed ! In the twilight of the garden ; in the dim-lighted upper chamber ; 
in the gray dawn of the lake side, he appears, speaks but a few sen- 
tences, and vanishes as mysteriously as he had appeared. All be- 
tokens a studied effort to stand aloof, to shun all close, prolonged, 
familiar intercourse. What impression was all this studied distance 
and reserve fitted to make upon the minds of his disciples? Put 
yourselves into their exact position at this time ; remember that not 
one of them before his death had risen to any thought or belief in 
his divinity ; that from all their earlier earthly notions of him they 
had to be weaned; that after days and years of the easiest compan- 
ionship with him, they had to be raised to the belief that it was the 
very Lord of heaven and earth with whom they had been holding 
converse ; yet, that belief was to be so formed within them, as not to 
militate against the idea of his true and proper humanity. See, then, 
what an important part in the execution of this needful, but most 
difficult task, must have been fulfilled by his mode of dealing with 
them during the forty days. 

For, let us only conceive what should have happened, if one or 
other of the two alternatives had been realized : if at once, after a 
few interviews, sufficient simply to do away with all doubt as to hi.* 
resurrection, Jesus had passed up into the heavens, never to be seen 
again on earth ; let us imagine that the descent of the Spirit had 
immediately thereon ensued; that the day of Pentecost had followed 
immediately on the day of the resurrection; that the eyes of the 
apostles had thus at once and fully been enlightened, and the great 
truth of their Master's Godhead had been flashed upon their minds ; 
the danger undoubtedly would have been that, seen in the blaze of 
that new glory, shining thus around his person, the man Christ Jesus 
had been lost, the humanity swallowed up in the divinity ; nor would 
it have been so easy to persuade those men that, ascended up on 
high, seated at the right hand of the Father, he was the same Jesus 
still — a brother to them as truly as when he lived among them, 
equally alive to all human sympathies as when he walked with them 
by the way, or sat down with them in the upper chamber. 

Take, again, the other alternative; that after nis resurrection, 
Christ had immediately resumed and continued — even let us say for 
no longer a time than these forty days — the exact kind of life that 
he had led before, returning to all his old haunts and occupations . 



APPEARANCE TO MARY MAGDALENE. 793 

spending a day or two with Lazarus and his sister at Bethany; 
travelling up through Samaria, and sitting wearied by the well's 
mouth, as before ; living in Peter's wife's sister's house, dining with 
Pharisees; crossing the lake in the fishing boat; companying with 
multitudes on mountain-sides; living and acting outwardly in every 
respect as he had done before — would not such a return on his 
part to all the old familiarities of his former intercourse, have had a 
tendency to check the rising faith in his divinity ; to tie his disciples 
down again to a knowing of him only after the flesh ; to give to the 
humanity of the Lord such bulk and prominence as to make it in 
their eyes overshadow the divinity? Can you conceive a treatment 
more nicely fitted to the spiritual condition, to the spiritual wants of 
those men at that time, than the very one which the Lord adopted 
and carried out — so well fitted as it was, gradually, gently, without 
violence, (as is ever the mode of his acting in all the provinces of his 
spiritual empire,) to lead those disciples on from their first misty, 
imperfect, unworthy ideas of his person, character, and work, on and 
up to clearer, purer, loftier conceptions of Him? In what better 
way could a faith in their Master's divinity have been superinduced 
upon their former faith in him as a man, a friend, a brother, so that 
the two might blend together without damage done to either by the 
union; their knowledge of him as human, not interfering with their 
trust in him as divine; their faith in him as God, not weakening 
their attachment to him as man ? 

"With this key in our hand — a key which unlocks much of the 
mystery of our Lord's conduct throughout those forty days — let us 
return to Mary in the garden. She sees Jesus alive once more 
before her. She hears him as of old call her by her name. He is 
hers, she thinks again ; hers, as he had been before ; hers, not to be 
torn from her again. All the warmth of those former days of familiar 
friendship filling her glad heart, she offers him not the homage of a 
higher worship; but, addressing him as he did her, "Kabboni," she 
says — my own, my old, my well-beloved Master ! She makes some 
gesture as of embracing him. Gently, but firmly, our Lord repels 
the too warm, too human, too familiar approach. "Touch me not, 
Mary." 'You think of me as given back to be to you the same 
exactly that I was before. You are mistaken; our relationship is 
changed ; our method of intercourse must be altered ; you must 
learn to think of me, and to act towards me, differently from what 
you ever did before ; I am here, but it is only for a short season ; I 
am on earth, but I am now on the way to my Father ; my home is 
no longer with you and the others here below, it is there with my 



70: THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

Father up in heaven; still shall I feel to you and all the others as 
tenderly as I ever felt, not ashamed even to call them still my breth- 
ren. Touch me not, then, Mary; stop not to lavish on me an affec- 
tion that has in it too much of the human, too little of the divine; 
but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend to my Father, 
and to your Father, and to my God and your God ; my Father and 
iny God in a sense in which he is not and cannot be yours ; but your 
Father and your God in a sense in which he could not have been 
yours had I not died and risen, and been on my way now to sit 
down with Him on the throne of glory in the heaven.' 



in. 

The Journey to Emmaus.* 

It was towards evening; the day was far spent when the two 
disciples reached Emmaus; yet there was time enough for them, 
after they had dined, to return by daylight to Jerusalem, (a distance 
of about seven miles, a two or three hours' walk,) and to be present 
at that evening meeting, in the midst of which Jesus was seen by 
them once more. It must have been between mid-day and sunset 
that the journey to Emmaus was taken. Of the two travellers, the 
name of one only has been preserved; that of Cleopas, generally 
believed to have been a near relation of Christ — the husband of the 
Virgin Mary's sister. It was not, however, the closeness of the 
relationship to Jesus which won for him the privilege of that strange 
conversation by the way. Had nearness of relationship had anything 
to do with the matter, there was one surely to whom, above all others, 
we might have expected that he would appear on the day of his 
resurrection. Yet neither on that day, nor on any of the forty days ho 
spent on earth thereafter, does Jesus seem to have made any special 
manifestation of himself to his mother, or indeed to have taken any 
individual notice of her whatever. Her name does not once occur in 
the record of this period of our Eedeemer's life. It looks as if with 
that kindly, son-like notice of her from the cross, Jesus had dropped 
the recognition of the earthly relationship altogether, as one not suit- 
able to be carried into that kingdom to whose throne he was about 
to ascend. 

And as it was nothing in their outward relationship to Jesus, so 

* Luke 24 : ia-33. 



THE JOURNEY TO EMMAUS. 795 

neither was it anything in the personal character, position, or ser- 
vices of these two men which drew down upon them this great favor 
from the Lord. They had occupied no prominent place beside the 
Saviour in the course of his ministry. They had exhibited no pecu- 
liar strength of attachment to him, or to his cause. Had Peter and 
James and John been the travellers, it would not have been so 
remarkable that he should have given them so many of the hours of 
that first day of his resurrection life; more hours, in fact, than he 
ever gave to any two disciples besides; nay, so far as we can meas- 
ure them, more hours than he gave to any other interview of that 
period — perhaps as many as were spent in all the other interviews 
together, for generally they were very brief. What was there in 
these two men to entitle them to such a distinction ? They were not 
apostles, nor were they of any great note among the seventy. Our 
Lord's first words to them may perhaps help us to understand why 
it was that he joined himself to them. He has been walking beside 
them, so close as to overhear somewhat of their conversation. But 
they are so intent upon the topic which engrosses them, that they 
notice not that a stranger has overtaken them, and been in part a 
listener to their discourse. At last, in manner the easiest and most 
natural, least calculated to give offence, expressive at once of interest 
and sympathy, Jesus breaks in upon their discourse with the inquiry, 
"What manner of communications are these that ye have to one 
another, as ye walk and are sad?" That sadness, who can tell what 
power it had in drawing the Man of sorrows to their side ? It was 
to Mary, weeping in her lonely grief; to Peter, drowned in tears of 
penitence — that he had already appeared. And now it is to these 
two disciples in their sorrow that he joins himself : so early did the 
risen Saviour assume the gracious office of comforting those who 
mourn, of binding up the broken heart. But in Mary, Peter, and 
these two disciples, three different varieties of human grief were dealt 
with. Mary's was the grief of a grateful and affectionate heart, 
mourning the loss of one beloved ; Peter's was the grief of a spirit 
smitten with the sense of a great offence committed ; the grief of the 
two disciples was that of men disappointed, perplexed, thrown into 
despondency and unbelief. It is especially noticed that it was while 
they communed together, and reasoned with one another, that Jesus 
himself drew near to them. There was much about which they well 
might differ and dispute. The yielding of their Master to the power 
of his enemies, and his shameful crucifixion two days before — how 
could they reconcile with his undoubted pretensions and power, as a 
prophet so mighty in words and deeds? This one, that other say- 



796 THE LIEE OF OHKIST. 

ing of his, pointing to a future, never now, as they fancied, to be 
realized, what could they make of them ? Had Jesus himself been 
disappointed, deceived; had he imagined that the people would rise 
on his behalf, and prevent his crucifixion? That might have been, 
had he not so often shown that he knew all that was passing in 
men s hearts. Could he, then, have been ignorant how the multitude 
of Jerusalem would feel and act? There was truth, too, in what so 
many of them had flung reproachfully in his teeth, as he hung upon 
the cross : He had saved others, why did he not save himself ? What 
a confused heap of difficulties must have risen up before these two 
men's eyes as they reasoned by the way ! And then besides, there 
was what they had heard just before they left the city — the report of 
some women that they had gone out, and found the sepulchre empty, 
and had seen angels, who had told them that he was alive. They, 
indeed, might easily have been deceived; but Peter and John bad 
also gone out. It is true they had seen no angels, nor had any one, 
that they had heard of, seen the Lord himself. But the sepulchre 
had been found empty. The women were right so far ; were they 
right also in what they said about the angel's message ? Could 
Jesus actually be alive again ? "We wonder that these two men could 
have left the city at the time they did; we wonder at this perhaps 
the more because we know that, had they but waited an hour or two 
longer, they would have had all their doubts resolved. It is clear 
enough, however, that neither of them had any faith in the resurrec- 
tion; and as clear that they were dissatisfied with their unbelief — 
altogether puzzled and perplexed. Ignorant, they needed to be 
taught; deeply prejudiced, they needed to have their prejudices 
removed. For hours and hours, for days and days, they might have 
remained together without clearing up the difficulties that beset 
them. But now, in pity and in love, the great Enlightener himself 
appears — appears in the garb of a stranger who joins them by the 
way. They do not at first, they do not at all through the earnest 
conversation which follows, recognize him. 

In reading the accounts of all the different appearances of Christ 
after his resurrection, the conviction seems forced upon us, that some 
alteration had taken place in the aspect of our Saviour, enough to 
create a momentary hesitation in recognizing him, yet not enough, 
after a closer inspection, to leave any doubt as to his identity. In 
the garden, Mary Magdalene was so absorbed in her sorrow, so 
utterly unprepared to meet the living Master — she looked so indi- 
rectly, with such a heedless glance at the stranger, whom she took 
to be the gardener — that we do not wonder at her failing to see at 



THE JOURNEY TO EMMAUS. 797 

first who lie was. So soon, however, as her name was uttered, and 
she turned and fixed that steadier look upon the speaker, the recog- 
nition was complete. To the women by the way, to whom next he 
showed himself, his very salutation revealed him, and left them no 
room for doubting that it was he. They held him by the feet, too, 
for a moment or two, as they worshipped, and got the evidence of 
touch as well as sight to assure them of his bodily presence. That 
evening, in the upper chamber, the disciples were assembled. They 
could not be taken by surprise. They were prepared by the reports 
of Mary Magdalene, of the women, of Peter, of the two disciples from 
Emmaus, to believe that he was alive ; yet when Jesus stood in the 
midst of them, they supposed that they had seen a spirit ; so troubled 
were they at the sight, so incredulous were they even as they looked 
at him, that he had to say to them : " Why are ye troubled, and why 
do thoughts arise in your heart? Behold my hands and my feet, 
that it is I myself; handle me, and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and 
bones as ye see me have;" and still further, to remove all doubt, he 
asked that some meat should be presented, and he took the piece of 
the broiled fish and the honeycomb, and did eat them in their pres- 
ence. It may have been the sudden apparition of Christ in the midst 
of them, while the doors of the chamber remained unopened, which, 
in part, begot the belief that it was a spirit that stood before them ; 
but that there was something too in the changed appearance of their 
Master, which helped to sustain that belief, is evident, from what is 
told us of his next appearance by the lake side of Galilee. John's 
quick's eye and ear recognized him from the boat; but when they 
had all landed and gathered round him, " None of them," it is said, 
"durst ask him, Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord." 
Whence the desire to put such a question, but from a passing shad- 
owy doubt, and whence the doubt but from some change in his 
appearance? When afterwards, on the mountain which he had 
appointed, Jesus showed himself to above five hundred brethren at 
once, they saw him, and worshipped ; but some, it is said, doubted — 
those, let us believe, who saw him then for the first and only time, 
and on whom the sight seems to have had the same effect that it had 
in the first instance on nearly all who witnessed it. It seems to us 
the best, if not the only way of accounting for this, to suppose that 
the resurrection body of our Lord had passed through a stage or 
two in its transition from the natural into the spiritual body; from 
its condition as nailed upon the cross, to its etherealized and glori- 
fied condition as now upon the throne ; the flesh and blood which 
cannot inherit the heavenly kingdom, still there, yet so modified as to 



798 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

be more plastic under the power of the indwelling spirit, less subject 
to the material laws and conditions of its earlier being, the corrupti- 
ble on its way to the incorruptible, the mortal putting on the clothing 
of immortality. And that strange, half spiritual appearance which 
the risen Lord presented, may it not have served to further the great 
end that our Lord had in view throughout the forty days, namely, to 
wean the minds of his disciples from their earlier, lower, more human 
conceptions of him, to a true faith in his mingled humanity and 
divinity ? 

There was, however, something special, I believe, in this instance 
of the two disciples travelling to Emmaus. They might not have 
recognized him, as, clothed perhaps in the garb of an ordinary trav- 
eller, he put his first questions to them by the way; but when he 
assumed the office of their instructor, and, showing such intimate 
acquaintance with the Scriptures, made their hearts burn within 
them, as he unfolded their new meaning, must they not many a time 
have turned on him a very searching look, wondering, as they looked, 
who this strange teacher possibly could be ? Yet were two or three 
hours spent in that close and earnest conversation, without their 
once suspecting that it was the Lord. How accurately does this 
accord with the differing statements of Mark and Luke ! Mark dis- 
tinctly tells us that he appeared to them in another, in a strange 
form — a form different from that in which they had seen him previ- 
ously. He appeared to them, as to all the others, somewhat changed 
in aspect ; but had that been all, they would speedily have recovered 
from their first surprise, and ere many minutes, would have identi- 
fied him. For a reason, however, hereafter to be alluded to, our 
Lord purposely concealed himself till his work of instruction was 
completed, and drew a veil of some kind over their eyes, which hin- 
dered their discovery of him by the way. 

He comes to them as an entire stranger, such as they might nat- 
urally have met upon the road ; and it is as a stranger that through- 
out he converses with them. " What manner of communications," he 
says, "are those that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are 
sad?" Little need, thought one of them (his own deep interest in 
them leading him, perhaps, to exaggerate that felt by the general 
community) — little need of asking such a question. Of what could 
any two men leaving Jerusalem, only two days after that crucifixion 
had occurred — of what else than of it, and him the Crucified, could 
they be talking? "Art thou only," says Cleopas, "a stranger in 
Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass 
there in these days?" And the stranger says to him, "What things?" 



THE JOURNEY TO EMMAUS. 799 

Thus it is, by questions needless for him on his own account to put, 
but very useful to them to answer, that Jesus draws out from them 
that statement, which at once reveals the extent of their ignorance 
and incredulity, but, at the same time, the amount of their belief, the 
strength of their attachment to Christ, and the bitterness of that grief 
which the disappointment of their expectations regarding him had 
created. A stranger though this man is to them, they do not hesi- 
tate to confess their faith in Jesus of Nazareth as a prophet mighty 
in words and deeds ; obnoxious as they know the now hated sect to 
be, they do not hesitate to acknowledge themselves openly as disci- 
ples of this persecuted and now crucified Nazarene, though the hope 
they once had, that he should have been the Eedeemer of Israel, 
they must confess themselves to have relinquished. Nay, so far has 
the kindly and sympathizing inquiry of this stranger won for him a 
way into their confidence, that, as if he must be interested in all that 
concerned the discipleship of Jesus, they tell him what certain wom- 
en of their company, and certain others of themselves, had reported 
about the sepulchre. 

The stranger's end is gained. The wound has been gently probed ; 
its nature and extent revealed ; and now the remedy is to be applied. 
He who had asked to be informed, takes the place of the instructor ; 
he who had been reproached for his ignorance, reproaches in his turn. 
"O fools, and slow of heart to believe !" Slow of heart indeed, and 
difficult to convince had they been, who, after such explicit declara- 
tions of his own beforehand, that he should be delivered up to the 
rulers, and suffer many things at their hands, and be crucified, and 
rise again the third day, had nevertheless remained so obstinate in 
their incredulity. Truly the rebuke was needed. Yet how faithful 
are the wounds of a friend; he wounds but to heal; he rebukes the 
unbelief, but instantly proceeds to remove its grounds, even as he 
rose from his slumber in the storm-tossed fishing-boat, first to rebuke 
the disciples for their unbelieving fears, and then to quiet the tem- 
pest which had produced them. The one great, misleading preju- 
dice of the disciples had been their belief that the path of the prom- 
ised Messiah was only to be one of triumph and of glory. To rectify 
that error, it was only required that they should be made to see that 
the predicted triumph and glory were alone to be reached through the 
dark avenues of suffering and of death. u O fools, and slow of heart 
to believe all that the prophets have spoken : ought not Christ to 
have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory V And begin- 
ning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the 
Scriptures the things concerning himself." Either Christ, then, is 



800 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

not himself to be believed — in which case it were useless to hear and 
read anything about him — or in those Old Testament Scriptures there 
are to be seen everywhere prophetic fingers pointing forward to Him. 
To search those Scriptures, and to find little or nothing there of 
Christ, little or nothing to show how it behooved him to suffer, and 
then to enter into his glory, is to handle them after a very different 
fashion from that in which they were handled by our Lord himself. 

It is not likely that these three travellers had a copy of the Old 
Testament in their hands. It was not by reference to chapter and 
verse, that the exposition of the Saviour was conducted ; it was by 
no minute criticism of words and phrases, that the conviction of 
these wayfaring men was carried. They were familiar generally with 
the Scriptures. One or two of the leading prophecies about the Mes- 
siah, such as that first one of God himself in paradise, as to the seed 
of the woman and the serpent; such as that of Moses as to the rais- 
ing up of a prophet like unto himself ; such as that of Isaiah, when 
he saw his glory, and testified beforehand of the sufferings by which 
that glory should be preceded and entered ; such as that of Daniel 
about the Messiah being cut off, but not for himself — Jesus may have 
quoted. But not alone from direct and specific prophecies — from 
the paschal lamb, and the smitten rock, and the serpent of brass, and 
the blood-sprinkled mercy-seat, but from the whole history of the 
Jewish people — from the entire circle of types and ceremonies and 
sacrifices, did Jesus draw forth the materials of that wonderful expo- 
sition by which, for two hours or so, he kept those listening men hang- 
ing upon his lips. As we think who the expounder in that instance 
was, and what the materials of his exposition, how natural the ex- 
pression, Would that I had heard all these things concerning Christ 
illustrated by Christ himself ! But have we not the substance of that 
exposition, as much of it as is needful for us to have, preserved in 
the writings of the New Testament, and may we not be sure that if 
we believe not them, neither would we be persuaded though one rose 
from the dead, as Jesus that morning had done, and should teach u 6 * 
even as he taught those two disciples? 

There was something indeed peculiarly, sublimely interesting in 
that two hours' walk and talk of these three men on the way to 
Emmaus. Had you been on that road that day, had you met those 
travellers as they journeyed on, beyond the earnestness of their con- 
versation with one another, you would have seen nothing remarkable 
about them, nothing to make you turn and look back upon them as 
they passed. Two of them are men in humble attire, travelling in 
the humblest fashion, returning to one of the humblest village-he mes ' 



THE JOURNEY TO EMMAIJS. 801 

and the third, there is nothing about him different in appearance from 
the other two ; nothing to keep them from conversing with him as an 
equal, one with whom the most unrestrained familiarity might be 
used. Yet who is He ? He who that very morning had burst the 
barriers of the grave ; he in honor of whose exit from the tomb an- 
gels from heaven had been despatched to watch at the foot and at 
the head of the sacred spot, where in death his body had for a time 
reposed; he who was now upon his way to enter into that glory 
which he had with the Father before the world was — incarnate Deity 
fresh from the conflicts and the victories of the garden, the cross, the 
sepulchre. It is literally God walking with men, men walking, though 
they knew it not, with God. History tells us of earthly sovereigns 
stripping themselves at times of all the tokens and trappings of roy- 
alty, for the purpose of mixing on equal terms with the humblest of 
their people; but h" story never told, and imagination never pictured 
a disguise, an incognito like this. But why was that disguise adopt- 
ed, and, in this instance, so long preserved? Why, instead of doing 
as he did with the eleven, first manifesting himself, and then opening 
their understanding to understand the Scriptures, did he keep him- 
self unknown all the time that the work of exposition was going on? 
May it not have been to obtain such a simple, natural, easy access 
for the truth into these two men's minds and hearts, as to give it 
even when unsupported by the weight of his own personal authority, 
a firmer and securer hold ? Whatever may have been its more spe- 
cial object as regards the two disciples, wonderful indeed was that 
condescension of our Lord which led him to give so many hours oj 
his first resurrection-day to this humble office. Many a proud scribe 
in Jerusalem would have recoiled from it, have deemed it a waste of 
his precious time, if asked to accompany two such humble men, and 
spend so much of one of his Sabbaths in instructing them out of the 
Scriptures. The divine Redeemer himself thought it not a task too 
lowly; and by devoting, in his own person, so much of that first 
Christian Sabbath to it, has he not at once loft behind him a pattern 
of what all true and faithful exposition of the sacred Scriptures ought 
to be, even the unfolding of the things touching a once crucified, but 
now exalted Saviour; and has he not dignified, by himself engaging 
in it, the work of one man's trying, at any time, or in any way, to 
lead another to the knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus ? 

It was with heavy hearts that the two disciples had left Jerusa- 
lem ; and had all the journey been like the first few paces of it, it 
had seemed a long way to Emmaus. But they are at the village now, 
and the road had never appeared so short. Had they imagined they 

Life of Cluiit. 51 



802 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

could be there so soon, they would have lingered on the road. Aud 
now this stranger, whose discourse had so beguiled the way, and 
made their hearts so burn within them, makes as if he would go far- 
ther. Emmaus, it would seem, is not his resting-place. But how can 
they part from him ? How may that conversation, which has shed 
such a fresh light into their understandings, such a new hope into 
their hearts, be prolonged? They invite, they urge him to remain. 
He gives, he makes the opportunity for their constraining him to be 
their guest. He acts as he had done with the two blind beggars ; 
with the disciples in the storm ; with the Syrophcenician woman. 
He suffers violence to be used with him; and then, when he has 
brought out all the strength of desire and affection towards him in 
the earnest entreaty, he yields to the urgency he had himself excited. 
The two disciples constrain him, and he goes in apparently to abide 
with them. They have him now, as they think, with them for the 
whole evening ; and what an evening it shall be, when, supper over, 
the conversation of the wayside may be renewed. The humble table 
is quickly spread. This is the home, it has been thought, of one of 
the two disciples, and he whose home it is prepares to do the duty 
of the host. That duty is taken out of his hands. The mysterious 
sti anger takes the bread; he blesses, he breaks, he gives. Who but 
One could bless and break and give in such a way as this? The 
scales fall from the disciples' eyes. 'T is he, their own lost but now 
recovered Lord and Master. Let him wait but a moment or two> 
they shall be clasping him, as Mary would fain have done, to their 
hearts, or, falling down, as the women did, and worshipping at his 
feet. Time is not given them. He reveals himself, and disappears. 
This moment known by them, the next vanishing from their sight. 



IV. 

The Evening Meeting.* 

When they left Jerusalem on the afternoon of the first day of the 
week, the two disciples had intended to remain that night, perhaps 
permanently, at Emmaus. The Paschal Sabbath over, they had 
resolved to return to their village home, to their old way of living, 
burying, as best they could, their expectations disappointed. But 
the conversation by the way, the manifestation in the breaking of 

* Mark 16 : 13, U ; Luke 24 : 33-49 ; John 20 : 19-23. 



THE ETTBNING MEETING. 803 

bread, that revealed and vanishing presence of their risen Lord, 
altered the whole current of their thoughts and acts. They could 
not stay at Emmaus. Late as it was, they instantly arose and 
returned to Jerusalem. How quickly, how eagerly would they 
retrace their steps! What manner of communications would those 
be that they would now have with one another; how different from 
those which Jesus had interrupted ; the incredulity turned now into 
faith, the sadness into joy. The stranger who had made their hearts 
burn within them, on their way out to the village, he too was travers- 
ing at the same time the road they took on their way back to Jeru- 
salem. But he did not join them now; he left them to muse in 
silence on all they had seen and heard, or to add to each other's 
wonder, gratitude, and gladness, by talking to one another by the 
way. Their hearts were now full of the desire to tell to the brethren 
they had left behind in the city all that had happened. On reaching 
Jerusalem, they get at once the opportunity they so much desire. A 
meeting of the apostles, and of as many others as they could conve- 
niently call together, or could entirely trust, had quietly, somewhat 
stealthily convened ; the first, we may believe, since the Thursday 
evening meeting in the upper chamber. And where but in that same 
chamber can we imagine that this Sunday evening assembly gather- 
ed ? The doors were closed against intruders, but these two well- 
known disciples from Emmaus are easily recognized, and at once 
admitted. In what an agitated, conflicting state of thought and feel- 
ing do they find those assembled there! They had all heard the 
reports of the women and of Mary Magdalene ; but they say little or 
nothing about them ; perhaps give them little credit. But there is 
Peter, whom no one can well distrust, telling all the particulars of 
his interview, and carrying the conviction of so many, that they are 
joyfully exclaiming; " The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to 
Simon." But this is not the general, not at least the universal state 
of sentiment. The two disciples tell their tale, but it falls on many 
an incredulous ear. They are as little believed as the women and 
Mary Magdalene had been. They are trying all they can by a 
minute recital of how Jesus had been known of them, to remove the 
incredulity, when suddenly, coming as a spirit cometh, casting no 
shadow before him, the doors not being open to let him in, no sight 
nor so and giving token of his approach, Jesus himself is in the midst 
of them, and his "Peace be unto you" stills at once the conflicting 
conversation that had been going on. The manner of this appear- 
ance may have been wholly miraculous and supernatural, or it may 
have been partly or wholly due to those new properties with which 



804: THE LIFE OE OHEIST. 

the resurrection body of the Saviour was endowed. Upon this diffi* 
cult, topic I have already said all it seems needful or perhaps possible 
to say. We must leave it clothed with the mystery which surrounds 
it. No mystery, however, hangs round the kindly, condescending 
manner in which Jesus proceeds to deal with the terror which his 
sudden appearance had created. He points to his hands, his feet, 
his side, to the marks of those wounds that told of his recent death ; 
marks which it pleased him that his resurrection body should still 
bear ; marks which, it would seem from the apocalyptic vision, were 
not to be effaced even from that glorified body which he carried to 
the throne ; marks which that form is to wear for ever, the only visi- 
ble memorials that are to survive of the great decease accomplished 
at Jerusalem. Jesus asks them to handle him ; an invitation which 
it is difficult to say whether they accepted or not. He shows them 
his hands and his feet; and while yet they believe not for joy and 
wonder, he seeks still further to remove their incredulity, by showing 
them that he has still the power, though no longer the need, of par- 
taking with them of their ordinary food. He eats of the fish and of 
the honeycomb. Doubt now gives place to conviction, fear to be- 
lieving joy; a joy so fresh, so full, that it in turn begins to shake the 
new-born faith. How true to nature all this rapid succession of con* 
flicting sentiments. Now at last, however, that little company of 
disciples has settled into a condition fitting it to listen, and Jesus 
returns to the subject that had engrossed the conversation on the 
way out to Emmaus; to this larger, more influential audience he un- 
folds the testimony that Moses, the prophets, the Psalms — all the 
three divisions into which the Scriptures of the Old Testament were 
classified by the Jews — rendered to his Messiahship ; dwelling par- 
ticularly upon the topic most suited to the existing condition of their 
thoughts, how, in accordance with all that had been beforehand 
declared and signified, it behooved him, as the Christ, to suffer and 
then to rise again the third day. " Then opened he their understand- 
ing, that they might understand the Scriptures." Wherever, there- 
fore, in the writings of any one of these Christ-taught men they refer 
an important passage of the Old Testament to the Messiah, we may 
conclude that they had for doing so the direct and authoritative 
sanction of our Lord's own interpretation. 

But his Messiahship, his death, his resurrection, were not matters 
in which they alone, their nation alone, were interested. Now that 
the needful work of suffering and death was over; now that the won- 
derful exhibition at once of the sacredness of the Divine law, the 
holiness of the Divine character, the deep unutterable love of God, 



THE EVENING MEETING. 805 

had been given ; now, wide over all the world, were repentance and 
remission of sin to be proclaimed in his name ; and they, the men to 
whom Jesus was then speaking, were to be the witnesses, the heralds, 
the preachers of this large and all-embracing gospel of peace on earth, 
iJid good-TV ill on God's part towards all the children of men : the first 
%nd earliest hint this of the nature and the extent of their great com- 
mission ; a hint which they did not then understand, which they did 
not understand even under the enlightening and quickening influence 
of the day of Pentecost. So far their understanding was opened, that 
they saw clearly now that Christ ought to have suffered these things, 
and then to enter into his glory ; but their understanding was shut as 
to that proclamation of God's forgiving mercy and love, which now 
in the name of Jesus was to be borne abroad over the whole earth. 

But though it was to be left to time, and the after teachings of 
the Spirit, to lift them out of their narrow conceptions of the Divine 
love to man, as if its outgoings were to be limited to the pale of any 
one community upon earth, still an initial impression of the sacred- 
ness of their vocation as his disciples, of the manner in which the 
duties of that vocation could alone properly be discharged, and of the 
blessed and enduring results which were to follow in the train of that 
discharge, might be made upon their minds. And this was the result 
which Jesus, in the most striking and solemn manner, proceeded now 
to bring about : the first step taken by him in the gradual and slow- 
moving process of qualifying them for that mission which they, and 
all other disciples of the Saviour after them, were to undertake and 
carry out. 

Then said Jesus unto them again, "Peace be unto you!" His 
first greeting, in which the same words had been used, they had been 
too surprised and affrighted to listen to, or take home. Now that 
their minds had become more composed, that they had settled down 
into a tranquil and joyful conviction that it was indeed their risen 
Lord who was in the midst of them, he repeats the greeting ; repeats 
it that they might not take it — though it was the common salutation 
phrase he used, as meant merely to be the usual greeting with which 
Jew met Jew in the ordinary intercourse of life ; that they m'ght not 
take it as a mere expression of good-will, a wish for their welfare ; 
but that they might have their thoughts thrown back upon what, 
three evenings before, he had said to them : " Peace I leave with 
jou, my peace I give unto you : not as the world giveth, give I unto 
you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid." 
He had said so with the cross, with the sepulchre before him. And 
now the peace having been secured, and sealed by the blood of the 



806 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

cross and the rising from the sepulchre, with a new emphasis he says 
to them, * Peace, my peace, peace with God, peace of conscience, the 
peace of pardon be unto you ; take it as coming to you through me ; 
enter into, and enjoy it as the fruit of my passion, as God's free gift 
to you in me. Let the quickening, the comforting assurance that 
God is at peace with you, that you are at peace with God, take pos- 
session of your hearts ; that, having tasted and seen that the Lord is 
gracious, you may be prepared for executing the high errand on 
which I am about to send you forth, that of publishing everywhere 
the gospel of this peace; preaching peace by me to them that are 
afar off, and to them that are nigh ; " For as my Father sent me, 
even so now send I you." I send you forth in my name, and I will 
qualify you by my Spirit.' And having said so, he breathed on them, 
and said, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost" — an outward and expressive 
symbol of the twofold truth, that dead, motionless, useless for all the 
common work of this earthly existence, as lay that dust which the 
hand of the Creator moulded into human form till he breathed into it 
the breath of his natural life, so dead, motionless, useless for the 
work of our Christian calling do we all lie, till the breath of true 
spiritual life be breathed into us by the Holy Ghost. And as it was 
from the lips of the risen Saviour that the breath proceeded, which 
spread out upon the little company at Jerusalem, so is it from the 
risen, exalted Saviour that the Spirit comes, whose life-giving influ- 
ences spread over the whole church of the first-born. But specially 
upon this occasion was the breathing of Jesus upon the disciples, 
and the gift which accompanied that breathing, meant to indicate 
that the mission on which Jesus was sending these disciples out — 
that of being witnesses for him — was one that could alone be dis- 
charged by those who, through him, had received more or less of that 
heavenly gift. It was this impartation of the Spirit, which was to 
form the one, indispensable qualification for the work ; without which 
it could not be done. We know, historically, that it was but a very 
limited measure of this gift which was actually, upon this occasion, 
bestowed. The Holy Ghost was not yet in his fulness given, because 
that Jesus was not yet glorified. The more plentiful effusion of this 
gift was reserved for the day of Pentecost. That Spirit, who was to 
convince of sin, and to lead into all truth, began even then, indeed, 
his gracious work in the minds and hearts of these disciples, by con- 
vincing them of their unbelief and hardness of heart, and by opening 
their minds to understand the Scriptures. This was but an earnest 
of better things to come — a few sprinkled drops of that fuller bap* 
fcism wherewith they were afterwards to be baptized ; but yet enough 



THE EVENING MEETING. 807 

to teach that it was by Spirit-taught, Spirit- moved men — by men in 
whose breasts the heaven-kindled fire of the true spiritual life had 
begun to burn — that the commission Jesus had been giving could 
alone be executed. And let not those to whom Jesus is now speak- 
ing, speaking as the heads and representatives of the whole body of 
his true followers upon earth; let them not think, weak as they are, 
powerless as they appear, that, in going forth to proclaim in his 
name, to every penitent transgressor, the free, full, instant, gracious 
pardon of all his sins, they are embarking in an ideal, unreal work — 
a work of which they shall never know whether they are succeeding 
ii it 01 not. 

- No,' says the Saviour ; ' Partake of the peace I now impart, ac- 
cept the commission I now bestow; go forth in my name; receive ye 
the Holy Ghost to guide you ; announce the news of God to sinners ; 
proclaim the remission of sins, and, verily I say, whosesoever sins ye 
thus remit, they are remitted ; whosesoever sins ye retain, they are 
retained.' Such I take to be the real spirit and objocts of these last 
words of Jesus, as spoken by him to his disciples at this time ; words 
spoken to animate them in their after work by the assurance that 
they should not labor in vain ; that what they should do on earth 
should be owned and ratified in heaven. It were to misinterpret the 
incidents of that evening meeting ; it were to mibtake the simple, im- 
mediate, and precise object which, in using them, our Lord had in 
view, to explain these words, as if they were intended to clothe the 
eleven apostles, and after them, their successors or representatives — 
to clothe any class of officials in the church, exclusively, with a power 
of remitting and retaining sins. Where is the evidence that, as ori- 
ginally spoken, the words were addressed exclusively to the eleven ? 
There were others present as well as they. "The two disciples," 
Luke tells us, "found the eleven gathered together, and those that 
were with them." These other members of the infant church, with 
the two disciples, had the benediction pronounced on them, as well 
as on the eleven ; the instructions were given to them as well as 
to the eleven ; the breath was breathed on them as well as on the 
eleven. Had Jesus meant, when he spake of this remitting and re- 
taining sins, to restrict to the eleven the power and privileges con 
ferred, should he not by some word or token have made it manifest 
that such was his desire ? At other times he was at pains to single 
out the twelve, when he had something meant for their eyes and their 
ears alone. Is it likely that at this time he would have omitted to 
draw a line between them and the others who were before him, had 
it been to them that these closing words were exclusively addressed ? 



808 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

But we have another and still stronger reason for not believing in 
any such restriction. Jesus had once before used words of nearly 
the same import with those that are now before us, and he had ad- 
dressed them to the disciples at large : " Moreover, if thy brother 
sLall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and 
him alone : if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But 
if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in 
the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. 
And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church : but if 
he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as a heathen 
man and a publican. Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall 
bind on earth shall be bound in heaven ; and whatsoever ye shall 
loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say unto you, That 
if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they 
shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. 
For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am 
I in the midst of them." The two concluding verses, as well as the 
preceding context, contain the conclusive evidence, that it was not to 
any select class or order of his followers that Jesus said, " Whatso- 
ever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven ; and whatso- 
soever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." (Matt 
18:15-20.) 

We are not in the least disposed to doubt, that while Christ 
speaks of the remitting and the retaining of sins as pertaining to the 
church at large, his words cover the acts of the church in her organ- 
ized capacity, the inflicting and removing of ecclesiastical censures 
through her office-bearers in the exercise of discipline. Here, how- 
ever, we have two remarks to make : First, that it is only so far as 
these acts are done by spiritual men, seeking and following the guid 
ance of the Spirit, only so far as they are in accordance with Christ's 
own expressed will, that they are of any avail, or can plead any heav- 
enly ratification ; and, secondly, that all the force they carry is nothing 
more or less than an authoritative and official declaration of what 
that will of the Lord is. Neither in any man, in any pope or any 
priest, in any community, or in any ecclesiastical court, lies the 
absolute, the independent, the arbitrary power to absolve the sinner 
from his sins. But did not he, we are asked, with whom alone it is 
acknowledged that that power rests, appoint the eleven as his eartlilj 
delegates, and in the commission here given them, convey into theii 
jkanfts as such, that power? Just as little as in two other commis- 
sions given to two of the old prophets, he handed over to them that 
power over the kingdoms and nations of the earth which we rightly 



THE EVENING MEETING. 809 

believe and affirm resides alone in the hands of the Almighty. 
"Then the Lord put forth his hand, and touched my mouth: and 
the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth 
See, I have this day set thee over the nations, and over the king- 
doms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw 
down, and to build, and to plant." Jer. 1: 9, 10. "It came to pass 
also in the twelfth year, in the fifteenth day of the month, that the 
word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, wail for the 
multitude of Egypt, and cast them down, even her, and the daugh- 
ters of the famous nations, unto the nether parts of the earth, with 
them that go down into the pit." Ezek. 32 : 17, 18. 

Here, in terms not less distinct than those in which Christ gives 
his disciples power over the sins of men, to remit or to retain, God 
gives to the two prophets power over the nations to cast down and 
to destroy. The true interpretation of the grant or commission is in 
both cases the same. In the exercise of any power, inherent or 
delegated, natural or acquired, Jeremiah and Ezekiel were altogether 
impotent of themselves to overturn a nation; in the exercise of any 
power, original or conferred, personal or official, the apostles were 
just as impotent to remove any sinner's guilt. The prophet's func- 
tion was limited to the denouncing of a doom which it was for the 
hand of Jehovah alone to execute. The chui-jh's function is as 
strictly limited to the announcing of a pardon which it is for the 
grace of the heavenly Forgiver alone to bestow. And if, in execu- 
ting that simple but most honorable office of proclaiming unto all 
men that there is remission of sins through the name of Jesus, she 
teaches that it is alone through her channels — through channels 
that priestly or ordained and consecrated hands can alone open — the 
pardon cometh, she trenches upon the rights and prerogatives of 
Him whom she represents, and turns that eye upon herself that 
should be turned alone on him. 

But it is the gracious office of the church, of every individual 
member thereof, of every distinct community thereof, in the sense 
here indicated, to absolve the sinner, to assure him of the divine 
forgiveness, to help him to believe in that forgiveness. Wherever 
the gospel of the grace of God is preached, not generally, but point- 
edly, to an individual man, and he is entreated and encouraged to 
take hold of peace, to accept of pardon, to trust in the mercy of 
Tesus, to believe in the forgiving love of God — then is that office of 
^emitting sins in the name of Jesus undertaken and discharged. Two 
illustrative instances occur to us; the one public and official, the 
other private and personal. The first is that of the penitent offender 



810 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

at Corinth, who was in clanger of being swallowed up of overmuch 
soitow. Assuming that it lay with the church to extend her forgive- 
ness to that offender, desiring to do nothing upon his own individual 
authority, claiming no exclusive power of priestly absolution, Paul 
'mites the Corinthian believers to deal tenderly, forgivingly with 
Jiat man, and to receive him back into their communion, telling 
them that he was quite prepared to go along with them in such 
treatment of the penitent. "Wherefore I beseech you," he says, 
"that you would confirm your love toward him. To whom ye for- 
give anything, I forgive also ; for if I forgave anything, to whom I 
forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it, in the person of Christ." The 
great object was to make the repentant one feel how wide, how 
generous, how cordial and unreserved was the forgiveness which the 
church extended to him, that he might all the more confidingly 
repose in that other sympathy, that other forgiveness, which, far as 
the heavens are above the earth, are above all the sympathy, all the 
forgiveness of man. 

Our other instance belongs to a late period in the life of the 
beloved disciple. It lies beyond the period embraced in the New 
Testament history, but is well authenticated. When the tyrant who 
sent John to Patmos was dead, the apostle returned to Ephesus. 
Engaged in a visitation of the neighboring churches, he saw in one 
of them a youth of so attractive an appearance that he specially 
committed him to the care and guardianship of the bishop, or chief 
minister of the church. The minister took the youth to his own 
home, cherished him, educated him, and at length baptized him. 
As he grew up, however, the care of his guardian relaxed, and he 
fell into the company of a band of idle and dissolute youths, who 
plunged together into a career of sin which led to the committal of 
offences that exposed them to the severest penalties of the law. 
Escaped from all restraint, and forming his association into a band 
of robbers, the youth became their captain, surpassing all of them in 
deeds of violence and blood. Time ran on, and the aged apostle 
once more visited the same church. He asked about the youth, and 
wept when he heard his story. He took his way instantly to the 
district which the robber-band infested, and was taken prisoner by 
the outguard of the banditti. He neither tried to fly nor offered any 
resistance to his captors. "Conduct me to your captain," he said to 
them; "I have come for the very purpose of seeing him." As soon 
as he recognized the venerable apostle advancing towards him, the 
captain would have fled; but the apostle pursued him, crying out, 
f 'Why dost thou fly, my son, from me thy father—thy defenceless 



THE INCREDULITY OF THOMAS. 811 

aged father ? Have compassion on me, my son. Fear not, thou still 
hast hope. I will intercede with Christ for thee. Believe that 
Christ hath sent me." The fugitive was arrested. They met once 
more. The apostle entreated him ; prayed with him ; solemnly assured 
him that there was pardon for him at the hands of Christ ; md did 
not leave him till he led him back again, and restored him to the 
church. In the manner of his restoring that erring youth, the be- 
loved apostle showed how thoroughly he had imbibed the spirit of 
his divine Master, from whose lips half a century before he had lis- 
tened to the words, "Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted." 



The Incredulity of Thomas.* 

Was it his fault, or his misfortune simply, that Thomas' was not 
present at that first meeting on the evening of the day of the resur- 
rection? Clearly enough, we cannot charge his absence with the 
same kind of neglect, with which now a refusal to join in the ordinary 
services of the sanctuary would be loaded ; for no such services had 
then been instituted, nor had any authority, human or divine, as yet 
prescribed them. That evening conference, hastily summoned under 
the prompting of the strange incidents of the day, wa's, in fact, the 
first of those assemblings on the Lord's day which have since be- 
er me one of the established customs of Christianity. But as no 
such custom had as yet been established, Thomas cannot be accused 
of violating it. The circumstances, however, under which that con- 
ference was held, were so peculiar, the pressure which prompted it 
so urgent, that we cannot imagine that any slight or fortuitous im- 
pediment would have kept any one of the eleven away. It may, 
therefore, have been Thomas' extreme incredulity as to the fact of 
the resurrection, the utter and blank despair into which the death of 
his Master had cast him, which indisposed him to join the rest. If 
it were so ; if he kept aloof from his brethren as believing that no 
good could come from their assembling; that it was all over with 
the hopes as to their Master which they had been cherishing; that 
they were mere idle tales which had been circulating about his hav- 
ing risen from the dead — then, for his neglect of all that Jesus had 
predicted about his death and resurrection, and for his treatment of 

* John 20 : 24 20. 



812 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

the testimony of Peter and the other early visitors of the sepulchre, 
he was amply punished, in losing that sight of the risen Jesus given 
to the others, and in his being left, for the seven days that fob 
lowed, to the wretchedness of uncertainty and doubt — an uncer- 
tainty and doubt which would be all the bitterer, as contrasted with 
the unclouded convictions and new-born joy of his brother disciples. 
While they, lifted from the depths of their despair, were congratu- 
lating one another on the great triumph over death and the grave 
which their Master had achieved, were strengthening each other's 
faith, and heightening each other's joy, he, alone and disconsolate, 
was scraping together the scanty food on which his incredulity might 
nourish itself. In the course of that week, his brethren made many 
attempts to rid him of his distrust. But all in vain ; the more they 
insisted, the more he refused. The stronger they affirmed the proof 
to be, the more inflexible became his resolution to resist it. The 
particulars of the manifold conversations and discussions which 
would, no doubt, go on between them, are not preserved. All that 
is told is, that he took and kept resolutely to that position behind 
which he had entrenched himself, as he said, "Except I shall see in 
his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of 
the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe." "What 
were the grounds, real or fictitious, upon which this incredulity of 
Thomas rested? and how came that incredulity to take such a shape, 
and to embody itself in such a declaration ? 

Here, I think, by realizing distinctly the actual condition of things, 
both as regards the external circumstances which surrounded him, 
and the jaundiced eye with which he was disposed to look at them, 
we may convince ourselves that the incredulity of Thomas was not 
due to any reluctance, on his part, to believe in the resurrection, sim- 
ply because of its being a strange, a supernatural occurrence. In 
that age, and in that country, this was a form of unbelief altogether 
rare, quite unlikely to have been exhibited by Thomas or any fol- 
lower of Jesus Christ. A belief in the supernatural was general, 
almost universal. To withhold his belief in any occurrence, purely 
and solely because it was miraculous, would have made a man about 
as conspicuous then, as a belief in all the alleged miracles of ancient 
and modern times would make a man conspicuous now. Between 
that time and this, the world has undergone an entire revolution in 
the state of its general belief, in the form of its practical infidelity, 
Besides, even if there had been a large leaven of Sadduceeism work- 
ing originally in the mind of Thomas, he had already witnessed, in 
his attendance upon Christ, incidents too extraordinary for him to 



THE INCKEDULITY OF THOMAS. 813 

refuse credence to the resurrection purely and solely on the ground 
of its singularity. Neither he, nor any others of the Lord's disci- 
ples — unwilling, as they all were at first, to believe that their Master 
was indeed alive again; difficult as they all were of conviction on 
this point — would have admitted their initial hesitation and incredu- 
lity to have proceeded from any such source. It was not the charac- 
ter of the event, it was the nature of their precedent faith in, and 
their precedent expectations about, their Master and his kingdom, 
which generated the difficulty which was felt by them as to believing 
in the resurrection. The true fountain of their earlier incredulity lay 
within, and not without; in their prejudices in regard to other mat- 
ters, not in the nature and circumstances of the resurrection. There 
appears to me, therefore, to be a violence done to the historic truth, 
to the real state of the case, when Thomas is taken, as he so often is, 
as a type or early instance of that unbelief, belonging rather to mod- 
ern than to ancient times, which staggers at all miracles, and is indis- 
posed to admit anything supernatural. 

Thomas' incredulity seems to have outstripped that of all the 
other disciples. They would not believe the Galilean women, when 
they brought to them the first reports of the resurrection ; but they 
had believed when Peter told them that he had seen the Lord, even 
before they saw him with their own eyes. But Thomas will not 
believe, though to Peter's testimony there is added that of the two 
disciples who went out to Emmaus, and that of the whole body of 
the disciples to whom Jesus had afterwards appeared. To what is 
this excess, this peculiar obstinacy of unbelief on Thomas' part, to be 
attributed ? Was he the most prejudiced man among them ; the man 
who clung most tenaciously to his earlier ideas and prepossessions, 
and would not let them go ? Did those common elements of unbe- 
lief, which operated in the breasts of the others as well as in his, yet 
work in his with so much greater force as to signalize him in this way, 
and keep him standing out in his distrust for so long a time beyond 
them ? There was one of those elements which we have some reason 
to think did work powerfully on Thomas. It would be quite a mis- 
take to conceive of Thomas, because of his abiding incredulity, that 
he was a cold, selfish, cautious, unsanguine, naturally misbelieving 
man, hard to convince of anything which lay outside the circle of his 
own observations, or that did not touch or affect his own interests. 
Whatever in origin and nature his skepticism was, it was not the 
skepticism of religious indifference, nor did it spring from a predis- 
position to doubt. That the spirit of curiosity, of inquiry, was strong 
in him, we may perhaps infer from his breaking in upon our Lord's 



814 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

discussion in the upper chamber, saying, "Lord, -we know not whith- 
er thou goest, and how can we know the way ?" Fuller evidence that 
he possessed and knew how to exercise the critical faculty, that he 
liked to search and sift the evidence, and get at the real and solid 
grounds for believing, will meet us presently ; but we must dismiss 
from our minds the idea that he answered in any way to the descrip- 
tion which Wordsworth has given us of the man— 

" A smooth-rubbed soul, to which could cliug 
No form of feeling, great or small ; 
A reasoning, self-sufficient thing, 
An intellectual all in all." 

The only other notice of him in the gospel narrative, besides the one 
already alluded to, and that in the passage now before us, forbids us 
to entertain any such ideas of Thomas' natural character and dispo- 
sition. Escaping out of the hands of his enemies, Jesus had retired 
to Bethabara. To him, in his retreat, the sorrowing sisters sent their 
message : " Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick." The mes- 
sengers were left without an answer. But, after two days of delay 
and inaction, Jesus abruptly says to his disciples, without explaining 
anything of the object of his visit, ''Let us go into Judea again." It 
seemed a fatal resolution; the disciples try to turn their Master from 
acting on it. "Master," they say to him, "the Jews of late sought to 
stone thee, and goest thou thither again ?" Their Master then tells 
of the reason for his going, and of his resolution at all hazards to 
carry out his intention. Then, says one of the twelve, if he will go, 
go to almost certain deatk, "let us also go, that we may die Avith him." 
Had the name not been given, had we not been told which of them 
it was who so instantly, so warmly, so generously declared himself 
ready to die with his Master rather than desert him, we should have 
said that it must have been Peter who spake these words ; but it was 
Thomas, to whom much of Peter's ardor appears to have belonged. 
Upon such a man, so ardent in his attachment to his Master, we can 
readily believe that the blow of the crucifixion came with a peculiarly 
stunning force. In proportion to the eagerness of his hopes would 
be the blackness of his despair; nor is it wonderful that, sunk into 
the depths of that despair, he would at first refuse to believe in the 
resurrection. Still, however, attribute what extra force we may to 
this one or that other of the ingredients of the unbelief shown by 
Thomas in common with his brethren, it seems difficult to understand 
the pertinacity of Thomas in standing out so long and so stubbornly 
against all attempts of his brethren to convince him. The great bulk 
of them had believed before they had seen the Lord. Why should 



THE INCREDULITY OF THOMAS. &15 

that evidence, which was sufficient to carry their faith, not have car- 
ried his ? Yes, but they all at last had seen ; they had seen, and he 
had not. In that very distinction do we not get sight of the secret 
bias by which the spirit of Thomas was swayed over to an unwilling- 
ness to give credence to the resurrection, an incredulity which, in 
self-justification, built up those buttresses of self-defence, behind 
which it finally entrenched itself, and from which it would not be 
dislodged ? The others had seen him, and he had not : why should 
he be asked to believe on different evidence from theirs ? He had 
been as attached a follower of Jesus as any of them. Why should 
he be singled out, and left the only one who had not seen his Mas- 
ter ? He did not like, he did not choose to be indebted to others for 
the grounds of his believing. He had just as good a right to ocular 
proof as they had ; and, in fact, till he got it he would not believe. 
The unwillingness that his faith should be ruled by theirs, generated 
a disposition to question the soundness of that faith. The evangelist 
has given us, only the conclusion to which Thomas came, the result 
of the many conferences with his brethren, and to which he for so 
many days so resolutely adhered. The very terms in which he em- 
bodied this resolution enable us to fill up the blank. Jesus had come 
among them, the other disciples would tell Thomas, suddenly, silent- 
ly — the door being shut; they had not seen him till he was standing 
in the midst. It was very like the mode of a spirit's entrance ; very 
unlike the manner in which one clothed with a solid substantial 
body would or could appear. They confessed to Thomas, that unless 
it were the two disciples who had just come in from Emmaus, all of 
them at first believed that it was a spirit, none of them that it was 
Christ : that he had himself noticed this, and had corrected their first 
and false impression. He had eaten in their presence, he had shown 
them the marks in his hands and side ; he had said, "Handle me, and 
see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have." Yes, 
but had any of them accepted the invitation, had any of them made 
such scrutiny of these marks, as to be sure that they were not super- 
ficial ? They could not say they had. Strictly interrogated by one 
who was anxious to detect any weak point in the evidence, they could 
not deny that it was within the limits of the possible that there might 
have been a mistake ; that there was a difference, they could not tell 
what, between the appearance of their Master as they had seen him 
before death, and as they saw him at the evening meeting. Seizing 
greedily upon anything which could possibly create a doubt, and 
turning it into an instrument of self-justification, Thomas at last de- 
clares, "Except I shall not only see in his hands the print of the 



816 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

nails, bat shall put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust 
my hand into his side, I will not believe." In this we discern no 
small amount of ingenious casuistry springing out of wounded piide, 
and an exaggerated feeling of self-consequence working in a nature 
not less strong in will than ardent in affection. 

"I will not believe." 'And is it even thus,' we feel disposed to 
make answer, ■ that thy hurt vanity hopes to redeem itself from the 
fancied oversight; is it thus that placed, as thou thinkest, below thy 
brethren, by not having got the same proof given them, thou thinkest 
to set thyself right by putting thyself above them, and declaring that 
that proof may have been enough for them, but is not enough for 
thee ? What right hast thou to ask a kind or amount of evidence 
above that which has satisfied all these thy brethren, and which 
would have satisfied any one unbiased by deep precedent prejudice? 
What right hast thou to dictate thus to God, and to declare that thou 
wilt not believe till the form of proof thou prescribest be afforded ? 
Thou wilt not believe ! and if thou dost not, who but thyself will be 
the loser ? Hadst thou been in the hands of man, in any other 
hands than those of so gracious a Master, thou mightest have waited 
long enough ere the proof was given, which in such a spirit wr*s ; 
demanded.' 

Seven days go past, and the apostles are once more gathered to- 
gether on the evening of the second first-day of the week. Thomas 
is with them now. What brought him there ? Why, if he thought 
them wrong in rejoicing over an event, in the reality of which they 
had not sufficient reason to believe, did he join himself to their com- 
pany ? Because, I believe, with all his assumed and declared increduli- 
ty, he was not in his inmost heart such an utter unbeliever as he would 
have others think he was. He had taken up a position which it 
behooved him to defend ; but I am much mistaken, if a strong desire, 
an expectation, nay, something even of a faith, that it was even as his 
brethren had told him, was not working latently, yet strongly in his 
breast. We often grievously err in this respect, in our judgment or rep- 
resentations of others. If a man is known or said to be a covetous or 
an ambitious man, we are too apt to make him all covetousness or all 
ambition, and nothing besides. And so, Thomas being obstinately 
incredulous, we might imagine him to be utterly so. Not at all likely. 
There was room in him, as there is in most men, for very opposite 
•wid conflicting states of thought and emotion. We believe, therefore, 
that it was in a very mixed state of faith and feeling that Thomas sat 
down that evening with the rest. They have not sat long when 
again, in the very same way in which he had come before, Jesus 




THE INCREDULITY OF THOMAS. 817 

enters and stands before them. The general salutation over, and 
before another word was spoken, he turns to Thomas and says, 
" Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands ; and reach hither 
thy hand, and thrust it into my side : and be not faithless, but believ- 
ing." How sudden, how unexpected the address! Thomas knew 
that lor seven days none of the disciples had seen the Lord ; none of 
them could have reported to Him the words that he had used. Yet 
now are these very words repeated. It is the omniscient Jesus ; it is 
his own well-loved Master who stands before him ! Instant within 
him is the rebound from incredulity to faith, to a far higher faith 
than that simply in the reality of the resurrection ; of that he has no 
doubt. He does not what the Lord desires, and what he himself 
desired before. He does not put his finger into the print of the 
nails ; he does not thrust his hand into the side. Enough to see that 
well-known form ; enough to hear that well-loved voice. That sight, 
those words of Jesus, are sufficient to rebuke and to remove his 
unbelief. In a moment his doubts all flee ; faith takes their place ; 
a faith purified, exalted, strengthened ; a faith in the true divinity as 
well as in the true humanity of his risen Lord ; a faith higher, per- 
haps, at that moment than that to which any of his brethren around 
had attained. Adoring, believing, loving, the fervent, affectionate 
Thomas casts himself at his Master's feet, exclaiming, " My Lord and 
my God!" 

A great advance here, we may well believe, on all Thomas' earlier 
conceptions of his Master's character. And may we not believe also 
that the bitter experience of the preceding week, the troubled exer- 
cises of thought through which he then had passed, the searchings 
of those Scriptures which it was reported to him had been quoted 
and commented on by Christ himself, had all been secretly preparing 
him to take this advancing step ; to believe that the Messiah of an- 
cient prophecy was a very different Being in character and office 
from what he had before imagined ; much lowlier in some respects, 
much higher in others. And now, all at once, the revelation of the 
Redeemer's glory bursts upon him as Jesus in person stands before 
him ; and not only does all his former incredulity die away, but on 
its ruins there rises a faith which springs up all the higher and 
sti-onger, because of the pressure by which it had previously been 
kept in check. Jesus knew how prepared Thomas was to call him 
Lord and God. He then might be asked to do what to Mary was so 
emphatically forbidden. " Touch me not," he said to her whose love 
to him had too much in it of the earthly, the human — too little of 
the spiritual, the divine. " Reach hither thy hand," he said to 

LHbofOkrlrt. 52 



818 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Thomas. The invitation may be safely given to him who is ready to 
own the divinity of his Lord. 

The title given him, conveying as it did so distinct and emphatic 
a testimony to that divinity, Jesus at once, as if it were his by birth- 
right, accepts. But though he refuses not the tendered homage, he 
passes no such approving judgment on him who presents it, as he 
had formerly done upon Peter when he had made a like confession 
of his faith, and Christ had called him blessed. Instead of this, 
Christ administers now a mild but effective rebuke : " Thomas, be- 
cause thou hast seen me, thou hast believed. Blessed are they who 
have not seen, and yet have believed." Christ could not mean by 
saying so, to declare that he who believes without seeing is more 
blessed than he who upon sight believes : for that would exalt the 
weakest believer now above the strongest believer of Christ's own 
age. The idea that Jesus evidently intended to convey was this, that 
of two kinds of faith equally strong, that was to him a more accepta- 
ble, and to the possessor a more peace-giving one, which rested on 
reasonable testimony in absence of personal observation, than that 
which would not yield to this kind of evidence, and demanded that 
ocular demonstration should be given. It was, in fact, as addressed 
to Thomas, a distinct enough yet delicate intimation, that his faith 
had been all the more acceptable to his Master if it had not been 
delayed so long. But though this was the primary meaning of the 
saying, it is not without its bearings upon those who, like ourselves, 
have not seen, and yet are called to believe. The spirit of Thomas 
still lives among us. Have we not often detected ourselves, thinking 
at least, if not saying, that, had we lived in the days of Jesus Christ, 
had we seen what those disciples saw, we would not have doubted as 
they did; that, give us but the evidence that they had, and our 
doubts would disappear ? We practise thus a strange deception upon 
ourselves. We transfer ourselves in fancy to those scenes of the 
gospel history, carrying with us all the ideas of our age, forgetting 
that very different were the ideas of the men of that generation, who, 
though they had the advantage of the sight, had the disadvantage of 
the prejudices of their country and their epoch. So equalized in 
point of advantage and responsibility do we believe the two periods 
to have been, that we may safely affirm, that the men of this genera- 
tion who will not believe in the testimony of the original eye-witness- 
es, had they been of that generation, would not have believed though 
they had been eye-witnesses themselves. He w 7 ho now says, I will 
not believe till I see, would not, even seeing, have then believed. 

Two closing reflections fire offered. First: Take this case of 



THE INCREDULITY OF THOMAS. 819 

Thomas, his throwing himself at once at his Master's feet, exclaim- 
ing, "My Lord, my God," as a most instructive instance of the exercise 
and expression of a true, loving, affectionate, appropriating faith. It 
is outgoing, self -forgetting, Christ-engrossed. No raising by Thomas 
of any question as to whether one who had been incredulous so long, 
would be unwelcome when at last he believed. No occupation of 
mind or heart with any personal considerations whatever. Christ is 
there before him ; thought to be lost, more than recovered ; his eye 
beaming with love, his encouraging invitation given. No doubt about 
his willingness to receive, his desire to be trusted. Thomas yields at 
once to the power of such a gracious presence, unshackled by any of 
those false barriers we so often raise ; the full warm gushing tide of 
adoring, embracing, confiding love, goes forth and pours itself out in 
the expression, " My Lord, and my God /" Best and most blessed 
exercise of the spirit, when the eye in singleness of vision fixes upon 
Jesus, and, oblivious of itself, and all about itself, the abashed heart 
fills with ad-oration, gratitude, and love, and in the fulness of its emo- 
tion casts itself at the feet of Jesus, saying with Thomas, " My Lord, 
my God." 

Second: Let us take this instance of our Lord's treatment of 
Thomas, as a guide and example to us how to treat those who have 
doubts and difficulties about the great facts and truths of religion. 
There was surely a singular toleration, a singular tenderness, a sin- 
gular condescension in the manner of the Saviour's conduct here 
towards the doubting, unbelieving apostle. There was much about 
those doubts of Thomas affording ground of gravest censure ; the 
bad morale of the heart had much to do with them. It was not only 
an unreasonable, it was a proud, a presumptuous position he took up, 
in dictating the conditions upon which alone he would believe. What 
abundant materials for controversy, for condemnation did his case 
supply ! Yet not by these does Jesus work upon him, but by love — 
by simply showing himself, by stooping even to comply with the con- 
ditions so unreasonably and presumptuously prescribed. And if, in 
kindred cases — when the spirit of religious incredulity is busy in any 
human breast, doing there its unhappy work in blasting the inward 
peace — waiving all controversy we could but present the Saviour as he 
is, and get the eye to rest upon him, and the heart to take in a right 
impression of the depth and the tenderness and the condescension 
of his love, might not many a vexed spirit be led to throw itself 
down before such a Saviour, saying, " Lord, I believe ; help thou mine 
unbelief"? 



819a THE LIFE OF CHRIST, 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 

To the twelve in the upper room at the last supper, also to the 
women by one of the angels on the morning of the resurrection, and 
again a little later by our Lord himself to the women, the word had 
been given that Christ would show himself to his followers in Galilee. 

It would appear that Galilee was thus chosen for two of the most 
important official disclosures of Christ to his own because it had been 
the field of his most fruitful ministry, because there the largest number 
of his disciples could be found, and because it offered the quietest 
and most secure opportunity for giving his intimate directions to those 
who were to carry forward the work of his kingdom. 

Probably the eleven apostles went to Galilee not long after the second 
Sunday on the evening of which Christ's sixth recorded appearance 
had occurred. Four out of the band may have been away from Caper- 
naum or Bethsaida visiting friends or relatives, but the others were 
together, when Peter, on a sudden impulse so characteristic of him, 
says: " I am going to try fishing on the lake once more." The other 
six agree to go with him, and they make their arrangements, and with 
boat and net begin the trial of their old occupation that very evening. 
Beneath the quiet narrative of John's Gospel, it is doubtless implied 
that there was latent in their action the suggestion of a return to their 
old life, especially should they meet with success. We may well 
believe, therefore, that there was a divine purpose and ordering in the 
fact that the seven toiled all night along the shores and in the coves 
with which they were so familiar and caught nothing! 

Marvelously tender and at the same time sublime is the way in 
which Christ reveals himself: first by directing them so that they 
secured a great netful of fish, and then by receiving and entertaining 
the weary, chilled, hungry men about a cheerful fire, with a warm 
breakfast. 

After this, with searching, considerate words, he restores Peter to 
his apostleship, and shows that it will at last involve the laying down 
of life even by the path of the cross. 

It is perhaps on the Mount of Beatitudes, where the sermon 
inaugurating the Kingdom had been delivered and the twelve apostles 
had been chosen, that Christ now meets and shows himself to five 
hundred of his disciples at once. Here also he now fittingly utters the 
great commission and assures his followers that he will be with them 
even unto the end of the world. 



OUTLINE STUDIES. 8196 



PART VI. FORTY DAYS AND THE ASCENSION. 
Study 24. Appearances in Galilee. 

(1) Christ to meet his disciples in Galilee 820, 821 

a. Occasions when this plan was announced 820 

b. Special reasons for selecting this region 820 

c. To this province the apostles retire when the Passover celebration 

is concluded 821 

(2) The seven by the shore of Galilee 821-827 

a. Peter says, " I go a-fishing " . 821 

b. The others say, " We also go with thee 821 

c. It seems impulsive, yet is foreseen and divinely overruled 821, 822 

d. They toil all night and catch nothing 822 

e. A stranger directs them to cast the net on the right side 822, 823 

/. A multitude of fishes are enclosed , 823 

g. John says, " It is the Lord " 823 

h. Peter swims to the shore 823 

i. The fish are landed and counted 824 

j. Jesus provides the breakfast 824 

k. Reflections on the miracle as influencing the apostles 824-827 

(3) Jesus' personal words concerning Peter and John 827-836 

a. Peter's peculiar position after denial of his Lord 827 

b. The question of his repentance and restoration. . 827 

c. Jesus' three questions to him 827, 828 

d. Peter's replies 828 

e. The new commission of Peter. 828 

/. Meaning of terms used 828, 829 

g. Variety of service in pastoral office \ 829 

h. The one qualification — supreme love to Christ 830 

i. Closing words for Peter 830, 831 

j. Contrasted view of John 832-835 

k. Peter and John form a double star 835, 836 

(4) Appearance to the five hundred 836-838 

a. Christ willed to show himself once and only once to the whole body 

of his disciples 836 

b. All travel to the appointed place 837 

c. The Lord appears 838 

(5) The great commission 838-852 

a. Christ's claim of all power in heaven and in earth 838 

6. The centuries give an affirmative verdict 839 

c. Proof that he is the Son of God 839 

d. In essence already on the throne 840 

e. He thus issues the great commission 839-841 

/. He provides the instrument — preaching 842 

g. The everlasting gospel of grace , 843-S46 

h. The two sacraments and the Church constituted 846, S47 

i. Christ's commands form the standard of Christian ethics 847, 848 

j. His presence is the motive of Christian service 848 852 






820 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

VI. 

The Lake-3ide of Galilee.* 

Speaking to his disciples in the upper chamber before his death, 
Jesus said to them, "After I am risen again, I will go before you into 
Galileo." On the morning of the resurrection, the angel said to the 
first visitants of the empty sepulchre, "Go your way, tell his disci- 
ples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee : there shall ye 
see him, as he said unto you." And as they went to execute this 
message, Jesus himself met them, and said, "Be not afraid: go tell 
my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me." 
Pointed so frequently and emphatically to Galilee as to the chosen 
district within which their Master was to manifest himself, we might 
have anticipated that the apostles would have taken their immediate 
departure from Jerusalem. They could not have done so, however, 
during the passover week, without being guilty of a great offence 
against the religious feeling of their fellow-countrymen. They stayed, 
therefore, for these ten days still in the holy city. This delay in pro- 
ceeding to Galilee had their Master's sanction not indistinctly put 
upon it, by his twice appearing to them collectively, while they yet 
lingered in the metropolis. And yet, upon the first of these occa- 
sions, on the evening of the day of the resurrection, Jesus said to 
them, "Behold, I send the promise of my Father unto you: but 
tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from 
on high." How are we to explain the contradictory orders upon 
which, given in the course of the same day, they were called upon to 
act ? Galilee had obviously, for some special reasons, been selected 
by Christ as the region in which some special revelations of himself, 
after his resurrection, were to be given. Did this spring from a 
strong desire to revisit the scenes of his early life, the neighborhoods 
in which most of his wonderful works were done ? In solitude and 
concealment, shunning everything like frequent or continued inter- 
course even with his own disciples, Jesus was to spend forty days on 
earth, before his ascension to the Father. Would it have been un- 
natural, that he should desire that the larger number of these dayg 
should be given to regions hallowed to him by associations such as 
human memory had never before been intrusted with? Or was it 
that, as Galilee had absorbed the largest share of his earthly labors, 

* John 21 : 1-14 



THE LAKE-SIDE OF GALILEE. 821 

and had yielded to that labor the largest fruits, so it was there that 
the largest number of his disciples could be congregated, and that 
the quietest and securest opportunity of meeting with them could be 
had ? It was there, we know, that he met the five hundred brethren ; 
perhaps, it was there only that so many could have been collected, 
or, being collected, could have found a secluded and protected meet- 
ing-place. Whatever the motives were which prompted the Saviour 
to fix beforehand upon Galilee, and to announce it as his chosen 
trysting-place for meeting with the brethren at large, one can well 
enough see how desirable it was that the apostles should be laid 
under the double obligation, first, of going northward to Galilee, that 
they might share in the benefit of the most public of all Christ's ap- 
pearances after his resurrection ; and, secondly, of returning to Jeru- 
salem, as to the place in which the promise of the descent of the 
Spirit was to be fulfilled, and they were to be clothed with power 
from on high to execute their great mission upon the earth. Nearly 
two months were to elapse, ere that baptism of the Spirit was to be 
given. It might have been inconvenient or dangerous for them to 
have spent so long an interval idly, without occupation or means of 
support, in the metropolis. But neither were they to be suffered to 
return to their old Galilean haunts without an intimation being made 
to them, that it was in Jerusalem that their apostolic work was to 
make its auspicious commencement. It is not likely that the apos- 
tles saw this at the time as we now see it, as they saw it afterwards 
themselves. When they first left Jerusalem, they had perhaps no 
small difficulty in harmonizing the apparently conflicting instructions 
which had been issued. One thing was very apparent, that their 
Master intended to show himself to them in Galilee ; and to Galilee, 
therefore, as soon as the passover celebration was over, they retired. 
One evening some of them are together by the lake-side. Whether 
any of them had ever thought of resuming their old way of living, or 
had actually engaged in it, we do not know. All, however, is, this 
evening, so inviting ; the lake looks so tempting ; the night, the best 
time for the fisher's craft, so promising ; their old boats and nets so 
ready to their hand — that one of them, the very one from whom we 
should have expected such a proposition to come, in whom the spirit 
of his old occupation should be the readiest to revive, Peter says to 
them. "I go a fishing." The others say, "We also go with thee. ' 
It was not a concerted meeting this by the lake-side. The proposal 
is evidently on the part of Peter a thought of the moment, and it is 
agreed to in the same quick spirit as that in which it is made. The 
meeting, the proposal, the acquiescence, all seem fortuitous, accidental 



822 THE LIFE OF CHKIST. 

Yet was it not all foreseen, all pre-arranged ? An un *een eye follows 
these seven men as they embark, and watches them at their fishing 
toil ; even the eye of him who was waiting for them in the morning 
l>y the shore, by whose hand it was that the whole accidents of that 
night and morning were regulated. Even so let ns believe, in regard 
to the most casual occurrences which happen still to the disciples of 
Jesus, that a providence as special and as gracious as that of which 
these seven men were the objects, is in them all, and over them all, 
causing them all to work together for their eternal good. Fitfully, 
curiously, without art or fixed design of ours, may the web of our 
destiny be woven, the threads thrown at random together, no orderly 
pattern apparently coming out of their conjunction, and yet, of all 
that web there is not a single thread whose place, whose color, whose 
motion is not arranged with infinite skill, so as to mould our spiritual 
and eternal existence according to its predestined plan. As we recall 
and review the past, we may trace up to some trivial origin, some 
chance meeting, some accidental conjunction of circumstances, our 
present position, our present habits, our present character. As we 
do so, we may be disposed to ascribe all to a blind fate ; but let this 
scene by the Galilean lake-side, and the many other incidents of a 
like kind which the life of our Redeemer supplies, be the living 
proofs to us, that " chance also is the daughter of forethought," thai 
the minutest details as well as the most momentous incidents of our 
earthly history, are all under the constant guidance of our Redeemer. 
The disciples toiled all night; it was the time most favorable for 
their work. These seven men knew the lake well, every bay of it 
where fish were most likely to be taken ; and they were skilled at 
this craft. Yet, though they did their best, and toiled all through 
the watches of the night, they caught nothing. Two years before, 
Peter had once been out all night with as little success, but Peter 
had never seen so many practised hands in a single boat toiling so 
long and toiling so fruitlessly. Had the remembrance of that other 
night of like fruitless labor been suggested to any of the seven ? It 
would not seem that it had. The morning breaks upon the quiet 
lake, upon the wearied boatmen, and finds them within one hundred 
yards or so of the shore. There, upon the beach, a stranger stands; 
Btands as any inhabitant of the neighborhood might have stood, 
who, having caught sight of the fishing-boat, and knowing how its 
occupants must throughout the night have been engaged, wanted to 
be one of the first purchasers from them of the fruit of their toil. 
One might have thought that the very sight at such an early hour of 
a solitary figure upon the shore, would have awakened curiosity in 



THE LAKE-SIDE OF GALILEE. 823 

the hearts of the disciples, and that, as they had been frequently and 
distinctly told, it was here in Galilee they were to see their Master 
again, it might have occurred to them that it was Jesus. The 
very kind and form of the question put to them, "Children, have ye 
any meat ?" — a question which it appears much more clearly from the 
original than from our English version, was just the one which any 
stranger wishing to become a purchaser of their fish might have 
put — may have served rather to allay than to stimulate their curi- 
osity. It is certain, at least, that they did not at first recognise him. 
Having got an answer to his question; having been told that they 
had nothing in the boat, Jesus said to the exhausted and hopeless 
fishers of the night, " Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and 
ye shall find." They may have wondered for a moment at an order of 
that kind being given; they may have thought that the stranger had 
seen some indication of the presence of fish in that direction, which 
had escaped their eye. They may have had but little faith that the 
new cast of their net would be more successful than the many they 
had made before. But what the stranger directs can easily be done. 
They may try one last throw of their net before they land. They do 
so, and noA>' at once they see that not without a reason had the 
order been given. Now, they find, that within the small enclosure 
which their net makes, such a multitude of fishes is embraced, that 
they have difficulty in drawing it through the water towards the 
land. And now it is that love proves itself as quick of eye as it had 
already shown itself to be swift of foot. When Peter and John ran 
out to the sepulchre, John outstripped Peter in the race. He out- 
strips him also in the recognition. They are together in the boat; a 
strange attraction binds the gentlest to the most forward of the 
twelve; and no sooner does it appear that the last cast of the net, 
taken in obedience to the command of him who stands upon the 
shore, is not only successful, but successful to an extraordinary de- 
gree, than the thought flashes into the mind of the beloved disciple 
that it must be Jesus. "It is the Lord," whispered John to Peter. 
The Lord ! Thomas has taught them the expression ; they begin to 
speak of him as the Lord. " It is the Lord," says John, and satisfies 
himself with saying so. And now once again the characteristic dif- 
ference between the two men reveals itself : John the first to recog- 
nize, but Peter the first to act upon the recognition. At once 
believing that it is as John has said, Peter, leaving it to the others 
so drag the net to shore, flung himself into the water. It was but a 
short distance to the shore — about two hundred cubits,, one hundred 
yards. He was quickly beside the stranger; although it does not 



824 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 



appear from the narrative that he gained anything by his greater 
forwardness of movement. 

It is soor evident that it was not the want of any supply out of 
their boat which had led Jesus to put to them the question, "Chil- 
dren, have ye any meat?" On landing, the disciples find a fire of coals, 
and fish already laid thereon, and bread at hand. Who gathered these 
coals? Who kindled that fire? Whence came the fishes and the 
bread? Mysteriously provided, the materials for the morning meal 
are there, quite independent of any supply which the last draught of 
the net may produce. But though all be ready for the weary and hun- 
gry fishermen, they must not leave their own proper work unfinished. 
As they gather in wonder around that fire to gaze on him who has 
furnished this fresh food for them, "Bring," said Jesus to them, "of 
the fish which ye have now caught." As if reminded by this order, 
of his having failed to take his proper part in the labor of drag- 
ging the net to the shore, Peter is now the readiest to act upon this 
injunction. It is he who lands the net; and not till the fish taken in 
it have been secured and counted, does Jesus say to them, " Come 
and dine." He takes the bread and the fish, breaks and divides 
them among the seven. Was the miracle of the mountain-side here, 
on a smaller scale, again enacted ? Was there only food enough for 
one man there at first, and did that food multiply as he blessed 
(which we may assume he did) and parted it among them? This 
at least, is certain, that he was known now not of Peter and John 
alone, but of all the seven, in the breaking of the bread. They all 
know it is the Lord; yet none of them durst ask him anything about 
himself — a mysterious awe felt in his presence sealing their lips. It 
is in silence that this morning meal by the lake-side is partaken of. 
This, John says, was the third time that Jesus had showed himself; 
not literally the third time that he had showed himself to any one, 
but the third time that he had showed himself to the disciples col- 
lectively assembled in any considerable number, after he had risen 
from the dead. 

It had been by a miraculous draught of fishes, like the one now 
before us, that, at the outset of his ministry, Christ had drawn away 
three at least of the seven now around him from their old occupa- 
tions, and taught them to understand that in following him they were 
to become fishers of men. Why was that miracle repeated ? Be- 
cause the lesson which it conveyed was needed to be again given and 
ree'nforced. Had they been told at first to go to Galilee without the 
hint of a power to be given from on high, to be bestowed at Jerusa- 
lem, they might have returned to their old neighborhoods under the 






THE LAKE-SIDE OF GALILEE. 825 

impression that they were to abide there permanently. And now 
that, bereft of the companionship of Christ, deprived of the means of 
support, if not driven by necessity, yet tempted by opportunity, they 
resume their ancient calling, was it not needful and kind in Jesus to 
interfere, and, by the repetition of that miracle, whose symbolic 
meaning they could not fail at once to recognize, to teach them that 
their first apostolic calling still held good, that still the command 
was upon them, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men"? 

The two miracles, the one wrought at the beginning, the other at 
the close of the Lord's ministry, were substantially the same. Re- 
garded as symbols or mute prophecies, they carried the same signifi- 
cance. Yet there were differences between them, perhaps indicative 
that the one, the earlier miracle, was meant to shadow forth the first 
formation; the latter miracle the future and final ingathering of the 
church. In the first instance, Christ was himself in the vessel; in 
the second, he stood upon the shore. In the first, the order was a 
more general one : " Launch out into the deep, and let down your 
nets for a draught." In the second, a more specific one : " Cast the 
net on the nght side of the ship." In the first, the nets began to 
break, and the ship to sink; in the second, nothing of the kind 
occurred. In the first, it was a great multitude of fishes that were 
enclosed, of all sizes, we may believe, and of all qualities. In the 
second, it was a limited number of great fishes which was drawn to 
land. It may be a fancy — if so, however, it is one that many have 
had fond pleasure in indulging — to see in these diversities, the dis- 
tinction between the present and visible effects of the casting forth of 
the gospel net upon the sands of time, and that landing and ingath- 
ering of the redeemed upon the shores of eternity. Treat this idea 
as we may, and great as are the authorities which have adopted it, I 
own to the disposition to regard it more as a happy illustration than 
a designed symbol — the image is a scriptural one, that both individ- 
ually with Christians, or collectively with the church, the present 
scene of things is the night of toil, through whose watches, whether 
fruitful or not of immediate and apparent good, we have to labor on, 
in hope of a coming dawn, when upon the blessed shores we shall 
hail the sight of the risen Lord, and share with him in partaking of 
the provisions of a glorious immortality. 

The night is far spent; that day is at hand. Let our toil then be 
one of hope, and our hope one full of immortality. And yet, dark 
and often troubled though it be, has not this night of our earthly 
sorrow shown us orbs of light we might never have seen by day ? 
What should we have known of the Saviour had it not been for oiu 



826 THE LITE OF CHRIST. 

sin ; what of his power to comfort, but for our present sorrow He 
is, indeed, the great light of this dark world of ours. In his incarna- 
tion we behold the earthly shining of this light. And what shall we 
say of his miracles, that long series of wonders done, of which this 
one by the lake side was the closing one, but that they were the 
means taken by him for the fuller shining forth of that light wh'ch 
lighteth every man who cometh into this world? Of the first miracle 
it is said in Scripture, and the saying may be applied to the last as 
to the first, to them all throughout — "This beginning of miracles did 
Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory." His glory 
as the Son of the Father stands forth exhibited in these miracles — 
there is a simplicity, an ease, a dignity in the very manner of their 
performance, which distinguish him from all other wonder-workers. 
Moses must plead hard, and struggle long in prayer with God, ere 
Miriam is cleansed of her leprosy. Elijah and Elisha must stretch 
themselves upon the dead ere life comes back again. Peter must say 
to the lame man at the temple gate, "In the name of Jesus Christ of 
Nazareth, rise up and walk." These all act as servants in the name 
of Another, who permits them upon rare occasions to speak in their 
Master's name, and to use their Master's power. But Christ, as a 
Son in his own house, speaks in his own name — puts forth his own 
power. His language to a leper is, "I will; be thou clean." He 
touches the bier, the bearers at the touch stand still : he looks upon 
the lifeless body, and saith, " Young man, I say unto thee, arise." 
His word of power is heard in the recesses of the rocky sepulchre : 
" Lazarus, come forth." 

But chiefly the glory, not of power, but of goodness, of love, was 
manifested forth in these miracles of Jesus. The miracles of Moses 
were miracles of awe and terror; wrought in rivalry of the colossal 
powers of ancient heathenism, they were on a scale of amplitude 
befitting their design, their chief sphere external nature, the earth, 
the rock, the river, the ocean, and the sky. Around the miracles of 
Jesus, a milder but richer glory gathers; their chief sphere, the 
region of human life, man's sins, man's sorrows, man's maladies, 
man's wants. It is divine power acting as the servant of divine love, 
which meets to gladden our eye. Nor is it in these miracles alone of 
Jesus that this love and power in blended action are to be beheld. 
It is not so much as outward evidences of the divinity of his mission, 
but still more as exhibitions and illustrations of his divine character, 
that we prize and love to study these miracles of our Lord ; and their 
chief lesson is lost on us, if we fancy that it was then only when he 
was working them, that the divine power and the divine goodness 






PETER AND JOHN. 827 

that lay in him were acting. That power and love were everywhere 
and at all times going forth from him ; and the only true believer in 
love and power divine, is he who sees them in every change of na- 
ture, in every work of providence, in every ministration of grace, and 
who never fancies that it is in the working of miracles alone that the 
great hand and power of the Omnipotent are to be beheld. The 
miracles are to be regarded by us, not as stray specimens, rare and 
exclusive manifestations of that unseen Lord whom we adore, but as 
methods merely which he has taken, suited to our ignorance and to 
our indifference, to startle us into attention, to make visible to us 
that which ever lurks behind unseen, to quicken us to that faith 
which, when once rightly formed and exercised, shall teach us to see 
God in all things, and all things in God. 



VII. 

Peter and John.* 



The repetition of the miraculous draught of fishes was nothing 
slse than a symbolical renewal of the commission given originally to 
the apostles, intended to teach them that their first calling to be fish- 
ers of men still held good. There was one, however, of the seven for 
whose instruction that miracle was intended, whose position towards 
that apostolic commission was peculiar. He had taken a very prom- 
inent place among the twelve, had often acted as their representative 
and spokesman. But on the night of the betrayal he had played a 
singularly shameful and inconsistent part. Vehement in his repeated 
assertion that though all men should forsake his Master he never 
would, though thrice warned, he had thrice over, with superfluous 
oaths, denied that he ever knew or had anything to do with Jesus. 
How will it stand with Peter, if that apostolic work has to be taken 
up again ? Has he sufficiently repented of his sin ? Will he not, in 
the depth of that humility and self-distrust which his great fall has 
taught him, shrink from placing himself on the same level with the 
rest? Does Jesus mean that he should reoccupy the place from 
which, by his transgression, he might be regarded as having fallen ? 
Singling him out when the morning meal by the lake-side was over, 
Jesus said to him, 'Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than 
these, thy brethren, my other disciples do?' What a skilful yet del- 

* John 21 : 15 23. 



828 THE LIFE OF CHBIST. 

icate method, without subjecting him to the painful humiliation of 
having his former denials of his Master exposed and dwelt upon, of 
testing and exhibiting the trueness and deepness of Peter's repent- 
ance. Will he repeat the offence; will he again compare himself 
with the others; will he again set himself above them; will he renew 
that boasting which was the sad precursor of his fall ? How touch- 
ingly does his answer show that he perfectly understood the implied 
reference to the past; that he had thoroughly learned its humbling 
lessons. No longer any comparing himself with, or setting himself 
above others. He will not say that he loves Jesus more than they ; 
he will not say how much he loves. He will offer no testimony of his 
own as to the love he feels. He will trust his deceitful heart no more. 
But, throwing himself on another's knowledge of that heart, which 
had proved better than his own, he says : " Tea, Lord, thou knowest 
that I love thee." 

Our Lord's reply is a most emphatic affirmative response to this 
appeal. It is as if he had said at large : l Yes, Simon Barjona, I do 
know that thou lovest me ; I see too that thou wilt make no boast of 
thy love ; neither in that nor in anything else wilt thou set thyself 
above thy fellows ; by the pressure of this probe into thy throbbing 
heart it has been seen how true and deep thy penitence has been, 
how thoroughly it has done its work in humbling thee. And now, 
that thou, and these thy brethren, may know and see how readily I 
own and acknowledge thee as being to me all thou ever wert, T renew 
to thee this great commission ; I reinstate thee in the apostolic office : 
"Feed my lambs!"' 

Peter was not asked a second time whether he loved more than 
others; but as three times he had been warned, and three times he 
had denied, so three times will Jesus reinstate, restore. Can we 
wonder that Peter was grieved when, for the third time, the general 
question, "Lovest thou me," was put to him? It was not the grief of 
doubt, as if he suspected that Jesus only half believed his word, but 
the grief of contrition, growing into deeper sadness at the so distinct 
allusion to his three denials, in the triple repetition of the question. 
With a sadder and fuller heart, in stronger words than ever, he 
makes the last avowal of his love: "Lord, thou knowest all things, 
thou knowest that I love thee." 

In the Greek tongue, the language in which this conversation 
between Christ and Peter is recorded, two different words are used 
for the one translated love, two different words for the one translated 
feed, and two different words for the one translated sheep. We may 
believe that in that dialect of the Hebrew which was spoken by 



PETEB AND JOHN. 829 

Christ, from which the Greek was itself a translation, (for we are to 
remember that only in one or two instances have the actual words 
spoken by Jesus been preserved,) there was some way of making the 
same distinction of meaning which is expressed in the different words 
for love, and feed, and sheep. It would be quite out of place to go 
farther here into such a topic. The result is that Jesus first asks 
Peter whether he cherishes to him a love, spiritual, holy, heavenly : 
that Peter declines using the term which his Master had employed, 
and contents himself with speaking of a kind of affection, simpler, 
more personal, more human; that Jesus first commits the feeding of 
the lambs to Peter, then the general guidance or oversight of the 
whole flock that he had purchased with his blood ; and that finally 
he returns to the simple idea of feeding, as applied to this whole flock. 
Of more importance is it to notice (as supplying the room for 
this variety) the change of image from that of the fisher to that of 
the shepherd, as representing the apostolic or ministerial office. 
Had it been solely as fishers of men that Peter and his brethren had 
been described, as the business of the fisherman is to get the fish into 
the net, and draw them safe to land, so it might be thought that the 
one office of the spiritual fisherman was to bring sinners to Christ, 
to get them safe into his arms. A true, yet contracted idea of the 
scope and bearing of the ministerial office might come thus to be 
entertained. It is Very different when that office is presented to us 
under the idea of a pastorate. A much truer, because ampler con- 
ception of its manifold privileges, responsibilities, means, duties, 
objects, is thus acquired. Oversight, guidance, care, protection, pro- 
vision, these are of the most varied kind, as adapted to all the condi- 
tions, exposures, wants, of all the separate members of the flock, and 
are all embraced within the function of the shepherd. But let us not 
here fashion to ourselves a perfect ideal of what the spiritual shep- 
herd is, or ought to be, and then imagine that each under-shepherd 
of the great Christian flock is bound, in some degree, to realize, in 
his own person and his own work, each separate attribute, each sep- 
arate mode or class of activities, which go to constitute the model 
that we have constructed. The work of the Christian ministry was, 
in the apostolic age, almost wholly evangelistic, aggressive. There 
was not the call nor the opportunity then for the exercise of many of 
those gifts, which came afterwards to be consecrated to the cause ol 
Christ, to the advancement of his kingdom. Yet, even then, there 
was no one fixed course, which all apostles, and all presbyters, and 
all elders, and all deacons were alike called upon to follow. Had we 
ihe lives and labors of all the twelve apostles before us, I am per- 



830 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

suaded that we should be as much struck with the diversity, as with 
the multiplicity of their operations. Very different, as in a single 
instance we shall presently see, were the characters, the disposi- 
tions, the capabilities of the twelve men whom the Lord himself 
selected as the first propagators of his religion upon earth; and 
room was found for all these differences acting themselves out in the 
different spheres of labor selected by, or assigned to them. So is it, 
so should it be still, in the labor of individual Christians, in the work 
of the Christian ministry. God has scattered among us a great 
variety of gifts, has set us where a great variety of services may be 
rendered. As there are many members in one body, yet all have not 
the same office; so neither have all the true members of Christ's 
mystical body the same office to discharge. "Let not the hand then 
say to the eye, I have no need of thee, nor the head to the foot, I 
have no need of thee." Let not those who are engaged in one kind 
of Christian work criticise or condemn those who are engaged in 
another. Let each of us do the best we can with the kind and 
amount of the talent intrusted to us ; let each of us try to do that 
which both naturally and immediately comes to our hand, not judg- 
ing one another; "for who art thou who judgest another man's ser- 
vant ? to his own master he standeth or falleth," but not to thee. 

There is, however, one common, universal, indispensable qualifi- 
cation for all genuine Christian work — a supreme, a constraining 
love to Christ. Once, twice, thrice, is the question, "Lovest thou 
me?" put to Peter; and once, twice, thrice, no sooner is an affirma- 
tive reply given than the injunction follows: 'If thou lovest me, as 
thou lovest me, then feed my lambs, feed my sheep.' And the first, 
the second, the third pre-requisite for all true feeding of the lambs, 
the sheep of the Saviour's flock, is attachment to himself — a love to 
Jesus Christ running over upon all who, however weakly, do yet 
believe in him. The want of that love, nothing can supply: not 
mere natural benevolence — that may lead its possessor to do much 
to promote the happiness of others, may win for him their gratitude 
and good- will, but will not teach him to labor directly and supremely 
for their spiritual, their eternal good ; not the mere sense of duty — 
that may secure diligence and faithfulness, but will leave the work 
done, under its exclusive promptings, sapless and dry— the element 
not there of a warm and tender sympathy, that best instrument of 
power. It is love-inspired, love-animated labor, which Jesus asks 
for at our hands. That we may be able, in any degree, to realize it, 
let it be our first desire and effort to quicken within our souls a love 
to him who first, and so wonderfully, loved us ; the flickering and 



PETER AND JOHN. 831 

languid flame in us, let us carry it anew, day by day, to the undying 
fire that burns in the bosom of our Redeemer, to have fresh fuel 
heaped upon it, to be rekindled, refreshed, sustained, expanded. To 
know and believe in the love that Christ has to us, to feel ourselvei 
individually the objects of that love, to open our hearts to all the 
hallowed influences which a realizing sense of that love is fitted to 
exert — this is the way to have our spirits stirred to that responsive 
affection to him, which gives to all Christian service purity and power. 

''Simon, Simon," our Lord had said to Peter before his fall, 
" Satan hath desired to sift thee as wheat, but I have prayed for thee 
that thy faith fail not ; and when thou art converted " — converted, 
Jesus means here not in the ordinary sense of the term, but recov- 
ered, restored — -"then strengthen thy brethren." That strengthen- 
ing of the brethren formed part of the shepherd's office, now anew 
committed to Peter; and what a lesson had he got in the treatment 
which he had himself received at the hands of the Chief Shepherd, 
as to how that office should be discharged ! The prayers, the warn- 
ings, the look of love, the angel's message, the private interview, this 
conversation by the lake-side — these all told Peter of the thought- 
fulness, the care, the kindness, the pitying sympathy, the forgiving 
love, of which he had been the object. Thus had he been treated 
by Jesus ; and let him go and deal with others as Christ had dealt 
with him. 

So far in what Christ had spoken, while there was much that was 
personal and peculiar to Peter, there was much also that had a 
wider bearing. But now the Lord has a word, which is for Peter's 
ear alone. "Whither I go," (he had said to him in the upper cham- 
ber,) "thou canst not follow me now, but thou shalt follow me after- 
wards;" and Peter had said in reply, "Lord, why cannot I follow 
thee now ? I am ready to go with thee to prison, and to death ; I 
will lay down my life for thy sake." These words of the apostle, 
though sadly falsified the night when they were spoken, still were to 
hold good. Peter did follow his Master, even unto death. He did 
lay down his life for Jesus' sake; crucified, as his Lord had been. 
Knowing this, and knowing that he needed all the encouragement 
which could be given him, to fortify him to meet the martyr's doom, 
not only will Jesus in that private interview in the resurrection-day 
wipe all his tears away, and now in presence of his brethren reinstate 
him in his apostolic office, but he will do for him what he does for 
no other of the twelve — he will reveal the future so far as to let him 
know by what kind of death it should be that he should glorify 
God — to let him know that the opportunity would 1>o at last afforded 



THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

him of making good the words which he too hastily and boastfully 
had spoken. " Verily, verily, I say unto thee, when thou wast young 
thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest ; but when 
thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another 
shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not." The 
explanatory clause which is introduced here, creates the impression 
that there had been a break or an interruption of the discourse. 
From verse twentieth, it would appear too, that Jesus had made 
some movement of withdrawal. These two circumstances combine in 
inducing the idea, that when our Lord said to Peter, "follow me," 
he meant simply that he should go along with him as he now retired. 
If, however, the words of the nineteenth verse were spoken in imme- 
diate connection with, and in continuation of what is recorded in the 
eighteenth, then, in saying "follow me," our Lord might have had in 
his eye the very words of Peter about following him to prison and to 
death, and have meant, in using them, to say, 'When thou shalt be 
old, and another shall seize upon thee and bind thee as they seized 
and bound thy Master in preparation for his crucifixion, then Peter, 
follow me, through the Cross to glory.' 

It is very difficult, owing to the briefness of the gospel narrative, 
to picture to our eye the scene which followed. Did Jesus, as he 
said "follow me," arise to depart, and was Peter in the act of follow- 
ing when he turned and saw John following also ? Did John mis- 
take so far the meaning of Christ's word and act, as to consider him- 
self equally with Peter called upon to follow? or was it of his own 
motion, and without any real or imagined invitation that he was act- 
ing? However it was, Peter, his mind full of the many thoughts 
that this pre-intimation of his death had excited, turns and sees 
John by his side. His own fate had been foretold ; what, he won- 
dered, would be John's ? The beloved disciple had once, at his sug- 
gestion, put a question to their Master about the others; now he will 
put a question about John — a question of natural and of brotherly 
curiosity, yet somewhat out of place. He has resumed too rapidly 
his old position, and his old hasty and forward ways. Jesus will 
not become a fortune-teller, to gratify even a friendly inquisitive- 
ness. He puts a check upon the unbefitting inquiry, and yet, sin- 
gularly enough, even in rebuking, he answers it. ' " If I will that he 
tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me." Each 
man's path, as each man's duty, is separate and distinct. "What 
the lot of another man may be, has nothing to do with the regula- 
tion of thine individual course. What is it to thee, Peter, whether 
John's destiny shall be the same or different from thine ? The thing 



PETER AND JOHN. 838 

for thee to do is not to turn aside to busy thyself with his hereafter, 
but to occupy thyself with the duty that lies immediately before thee 
to discharge. What is that to thee? follow thou me.' But "if I will 
that he tarry till I come :" Only imagine that Jesus was other than 
divine, and how arrogant the assumption here of his will regulating 
human destinies, fixing the time and the manner of his disciples' 
death; Deity incarnate alone was entitled to use such language: "If 
I will that he tarry till I come." When John wrote his gospel, that 
saying of Jesus was not understood. Some regarded it as implying 
that John should never die. The beloved disciple himself saw only 
so far into its meaning, that it contained no direct assertion of that 
kind, but farther he did not then see. Perhaps afterwards, when he 
saw all the apostles die out before, and witnessed, as he only did, 
the destruction of Jerusalem, of which Christ had often spoken as 
identified with his coming — perhaps at that time, forty years after 
the meeting by the lake-side, he remembered the words that his 
Master had spoken, and wondered as he perceived how remarkably 
they were fulfilled. 

Next to the absence of all notice of our Lord's mother, few things 
are more remarkable, in the narrative of the period after the resur- 
rection, than the silence respecting John. One of the earliest visit- 
ants at the sepulchre, present at both the evening interviews at Jeru- 
salem, the disciple whom Jesus loved is neither spoken of nor spoken 
to. This is the only case in which he meets our eye, and he appears 
here rather in conjunction with Peter than with Jesus. In the ac- 
count of our Lord's ministry, though John was frequently associated 
svith Peter, it was as one of the two sons of Zebedee, the tie to his 
brother James being then obviously a stronger one than that to Peter. 
But from the hour when the two entered together the hall of the 
high priest, a singular attraction appears to have drawn these two 
men together. The brotherly tie yields to one which has become 
still stronger, and instead of its being Peter and James and John, it 
is now Peter and John who are seen constantly in company with one 
another. This is all the more singular, when one considers how 
unlike the two were in natural character, in original disposition. 

John was born a lover of repose, of retirement. Left to himself, 
he would never have been an adventurous or ambitious man. Even 
in his very motion there had been rest. Had he never seen the Sav- 
iour, he would have remained quite contented in the occupation to 
which he had been brought up. To sit upon the sunny banks of thai 
lovely inland lake mending his nets, his eye straying occasional!/ 
across its placid waters, or lifted to the blue expanse above; to take 

Ufe of Christ. 58 



834 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

his accustomed seat in his fishing-boat, to launch out by night under 
these burning heavens, and sweep over the well-known haunts, would 
have been enough for him ; he neither would have desired nor sought 
for change. It may seem to militate against this idea of John's char- 
acter that he and his brother were called Boanerges, the sons of 
thunder. We are not told, however, the reason why this title was 
bestowed on them ; it may have been derived from something pecu- 
liar in the father rather than in the sons. Nor can we allow the 
bestowal of an unexplained and ambiguous epithet to outweigh the 
whole drift and bearing of the gospel narrative, which speaks so 
much of the meekness and modesty and gentleness and retiringness 
of John. But let us not confound John's yielding gentleness with 
that spirit of easy compliance which shuns all contest, because it 
does not feel that there is anything worth contending for. Beneath 
John's calm and soft exterior there lay a hidden strength. In the 
mean, vulgar strife of petty, earthly passions, John might have yield- 
ed when Peter would have stood firm. But in more exciting scenes, 
under more formidable tests, John would have stood firm when Peter 
might have yielded. This was proved on the night of the arrest and 
the day of the crucifixion. And there was latent heat as well as 
latent strength in John. As lightning lurks amid the warm, soft 
drops of the summer shower, so the force of a love-kindled zeal 
lurked in his gentle spirit. The Samaritans might a thousand times 
have refused to receive himself into their dwellings, and it had stirred 
no resentment in his breast ; but when they contemptuously refused 
to receive the Master to whom he was so ardently attached, it was 
more than he could endure. He joined his brother James in saying, 
"Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, 
and consume them ?" — a solitary outbreak of a sentiment but seldom 
felt, or if felt, habitually restrained; yet that single flash reveals an 
inner region where all kinds of vivid emotions lived and moved and 
had their being. 

Nor let us confound John's simplicity with shallowness. If it be 
the pure in heart who see God, John's was the eye to see farther into 
the highest of all regions than that of any of his fellows. If it be he 
that loveth who knoweth God — for God is love — John's knowledge of 
God must have stood unrivalled. We reckon his as belonging to the 
highest order of intellect ; not analytical nor constructive ; the logical 
faculty, the reasoning powers, not largely developed; but his the 
quick bright eye of intuition, which, at a glance, sees farther into the 
heart of truth than by the stepping-stones of mere argumentation you 
can ever be conveyed. There were besides under that calm surface 



PETER AND JOHN. 835 

which the spirit of the beloved disciple displayed to the common eye 
of observation, profound and glorious depths. The writer of the 
gospel and epistle is, let us remember, the writer also of the Apoca- 
lypse ; and if the Holy Spirit chose the vehicle best fitted for receiv- 
ing and transmitting the divine communications, then to John we 
!nust assign not the pure deep love alone of a gentle heart, but the 
vision and the faculty divine, the high imaginative power. 

Peter, again, was born with the strongest constitutional tendency 
to a restless and excited activity. He could not have endured a life 
of monotonous repose. He was a child of impulse ; he would have 
been a lover of adventure. He was not selfish enough to be a covet- 
ous, nor had he steadiness enough to be a successfully ambitious 
man ; but we can conceive of him as intensely excited for the time 
by any distinction or any honor placed within his reach. Had he 
never seen the Lord, one cannot think of him as remaining all his 
life a fisherman of Galilee ; or, if the natural restraints of his position 
kept him there, even in that fisherman's life he would have found the 
means of gratifying his constitutional biases. Eager, ardent, san- 
guine, it needed but a spark to fall upon the inflammable material, 
and his whole soul kindled into a blaze, ready to burst along what- 
ever path lay open at the time for its passage. The great natural 
defect in Peter was the want of steadiness, of a ruling, regulating 
principle to keep him moving along one line. Left to work at ran- 
dom, the excitability of such a susceptible spirit involved its pos- 
sessor often in inconsistency, exposed him often to peril. We have, 
however, had this apostle so often before us, that we need not say 
more of him. Enough has been said to bring out to your eye the 
strong contrast in natural character and disposition between him and 
John. Yet these were the two of all the twelve who finally drew 
closest together. The day of Pentecost wrought a great change upon 
them both, and by doing so linked them in still closer bonds. The 
grace was given them which enabled each to struggle successfully 
with his own original defects, and to find in the other that which he 
most wanted. It is truly singular, in reading the earlier chapters of 
the Acts of the Apostles, to notice how close the coalition between 
Peter and John became. Peter and John go up together to the tem- 
ple. It is upon Peter and John that the lame man at the gate fixes 
his eye. After he was healed, it is said that he held Peter and John 
as if they were inseparable. It was when the}- saw the boldness of 
Peter and John that the members of the Sanhedrim marvelled. 
And when they commanded them to speak no more in the name of 
Jesus, it is said that "Peter and John answered and said," as if in 



836 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

very voice as well as in action they were one. Acts 3:1, 3, 11 
4:13,19. 

Blessed fruit this of that all-conquering grace of God, which lifts 
Peter above the fear of reproach, and John above the love of ease ; 
which brings the most timid and retiring of the twelve to the side of 
the most stirring, the most impetuous ; supplying a stimulus to the 
one — a regulator to the other; bringing them into a union so near, 
and to both so beneficial — John's gentleness leaning upon Peter's 
strength; Peter's fervid zeal chastened by John's pure, calm love. 
In the glorious company of the apostles, they shone together as a 
double star, in whose complemental light, love and zeal, labor and 
rest, action and contemplation, the working servant and the waiting 
virgin, are brought into beauteous harmony. 



VIII. 

The Great Commission.* 

The very fact that among those who saw Christ upon the moun- 
tain side of Galilee there were some who doubted, convinces us that 
more than the eleven must have been present at the interview. For 
after his repeated appearances to them in Jerusalem, after his meet- 
ing with them, and eating with them, and showing them his hands 
and his side, and asking them to handle him — that any of the eleven 
should at this after stage have doubted, is scarcely credible. And 
our impression of the incredibility of this is deepened by reflecting 
that it was to a place of his own appointment they now went, and 
that for the very purpose of seeing and conversing with him once 
more. There are other and still weightier reasons, which leave no 
ground for doubt, that the appearance of the risen Saviour recorded 
by St. Matthew — the only one which this evangelist does record, and 
to which we may therefore conclude that a peculiar importance 
attached — was the same with that to which St. Paul refers, when he 
says: "After that he was seen of five hundred brethren at once, of 
whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen 
asleep." 

It was the will of Christ to show himself alone after his resurrec- 
tion, once, and once only, to the whole collective body of his disci- 
ples; to as many, at least, as could conveniently be coogregated at 

* Matt. 28 : 16-20. 



THE GREAT COMMISSION. 837 

one time, and in one place. It was in Galilee that this purpose could 
best be accomplished. There, and there only, could so many as five 
hundred of his disciples be found, and brought safely together. 
After the ascension, when all assembled at Jerusalem that the city 
and its neighborhood could supply, the number of them gathered 
there was only one hundred and twenty. Hence, perhaps, one rea- 
son why, on the night before his death, and on the morning of his 
resurrection, the apostles were so repeatedly and emphatically told 
by Christ himself, and through the commissioned angel, that he went 
before them into Galilee, and it was to be there that they were to 
see him. Their attention was thus fixed beforehand upon an inter- 
view at which the most public and impressive manifestation of their 
risen Lord was to be made. 

The necessity of the case required that both time and place should 
be named beforehand, fixed by our Lord himself, by him communi- 
cated to the apostles, by them announced to others; the tidings con- 
veyed abroad over Galilee, wherever disciples of Jesus were to be 
found. One can imagine what intense curiosity, what longing desire 
to be present at such an interview, would be kindled wherever the 
intelligence was carried. In due time the day appointed dawns. On 
towards the indicated mountain-side, group after group is eagerly 
pressing ; the solitary one from some far-off hamlet, the one of his 
family that has been taken while the others were left, mingling with 
the larger companies that Capernaum and Bethsaida send forth. All 
are gathered now. From knot to knot of old Galilean friends the 
apostles pass, assuring them that this is indeed the day and the 
place the Lord himself had named; and giving a still quicker edge to 
the already keen enough curiosity, by telling of the strange things 
they had so lately seen and heard at Jerusalem. 

What new thoughts about the Crucified would be stirring then in 
many a breast ! A prophet, all of them had taken him to be ; but if 
all be true that they now are hearing, he must be more than a proph- 
et ; for which one of all their prophets ever burst the barriers of the 
grave? The Messiah, many of them had taken him to be; but now, 
if they are to retain that faith, their former notions of who and what 
the Messiah was to be, must be greatly changed. A Messiah reach* 
ing his throne through suffering and death, is an idea quite new to 
them. They ask about his late appearances, and are lost in wonder 
as they hear how few they have been, how short ; at what a distance, 
eren from the eleven, the risen Jesus had kept; what a studied 
reserve there had been in his intercourse with them, so different from 
his old familiarity. He is, he must be, a Being other, far higher, 



838 THE LIFE OF CHEIST. 

than they had fancied him to be. Is it really true what they had 
heard himself say, but had not fully understood, that he was the Sou 
of, the equal of the Father — God incarnate ? Thomas tells them 
that he fully believes so. The other apostles tell them that he has 
opened their minds through a new interpretation of the prophecies 
to quite different notions about himself and his kingdom from any- 
thing they had hitherto entertained. In what a very singular condi- 
tion of thought and feeling, as they try to realize it, must that com- 
pany of five hundred brethren have been, which collected on the 
mountain-side, and stood awaiting Christ's coming ? 

At last the Lord appears: we know not how; whether bursting 
at once on their astonished vision, without shadow of approaching 
form or sound of advancing footstep, seen standing in the midst ; or 
whether seen at first far off, alone in the distance, silently watched, 
as treading the mountain-side he drew nearer and nearer to them, 
till at last he was by their side. However he came, when they saw 
him, we are told they worshipped : with clasped hands, or on bended 
knee ; some, like Thomas, with profound and intelligent adoration ; 
others with a worship heightened by wonder, somewhat vague, 
but pure as the mountain air they breathed. But some doubted— 
those who saw him now for the first time after his resurrection. Here, 
as in almost every first interview of the kind, there was a doubt, one 
speedily dispelled, whose natural source we have already attempted 
to indicate. 

" And Jesus came and spake to them, saying, All power is given 
to me in heaven and in earth." To whatever height of conception 
and belief the men of that company may have been rising, upon 
whose ears these words fell, as Christ's greeting to them in the first, 
the only interview they were to have with him after his resurrection, 
we may be assured that they went much beyond what they ever ex- 
pected to hear coming from those lips. Already they had worship- 
ped, gazing in wonder on him, as one who had come to them from 
the dead. But what fresh subject for wonder now ; what higher rea- 
son for worship now ! Power they knew him to possess ; power over 
earth, and air, and water ; power over the spirits of all flesh ; power 
even over the powers of darkness. Power enough they had attrib- 
uted to him to set up an earthly kingdom in front of all opposition, 
to crush all his enemies under his feet. Such power they were pro- 
pared to hear him claim, and see him exercise. But they were not 
prepared to hear him say, " All power is given to me in heaven and 
in earth." Far above all their former thoughts of him does Jesus 
thus ascend, and, by ascending, try to lead them up. It has been 



THE GREAT COMMISSION. 839 

already suggested, that one part of Christ's design in dwelling for 
these forty days on earth, and in the mode of conduct to his disciples 
which he pursued, was gradually to lift their minds from lower and 
unworthier thoughts of him to a true conception of his divine dignity 
and power ; and it confirms our belief in this to find that in the great- 
est, the most public, the most solemn manifestation of himself which 
Christ at that time made, his first declaration to the assembled 
five hundred was, "All power is given to me in heaven and in 
earth ! " 

When first uttered, how many eyes were fixed in wonder upon the 
man who spake these words ! Eighteen hundred years have gone 
past since then; millions upon millions of the human family have 
had these words repeated to them, as spoken by the Son of Mary; 
have regarded them as honestly and truly spoken ; as expressing but 
a simple fact. How could this have been ? How could a man of 
woman born, who had lived and died as we do, have been regarded 
as other than the vainest, most arrogant of pretenders, who said that 
all power in heaven and in earth was his, had there not been some- 
thing in the whole earthly history of this man which corresponded 
with and bore out such an extraordinary assumption ? And even 
such were the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. They have now 
been for centuries before the world, as the life and death of one who 
claimed to be the eternal Son of God, the equal of the Father; of one 
who said that as the Father knew him, so knew he the Father; of 
one who said that whatsoever things the Father did, the same did 
the Son likewise ; that the Father had delivered all things into his 
hand ; that all power was his in heaven and in earth. And no one 
has ever been able to show anything in the character, the sayings, the 
doings of Jesus Christ, inconsistent with such extraordinary preten- 
sions ; all is in harmony with the claim, all goes to sanction and sus- 
tain it. It seems to us that the simple fact that there was a Man 
who lived for three-and-thirty years in familiar intercourse with his 
fellow-men, who yet, before he left this world, was recognized and 
worshipped by five hundred of his fellow-men as one who was guilty 
of no presumption in saying, " All power is given me in heaven and 
in earth;" and who, since that time, has been believed in by such 
multitudes as the God incarnate, goes far, of itself, to sustain the be- 
lief that he was indeed the Son of the Highest, and that it was nc 
robbery with him to count himself equal with God ; for, only imagine 
that he was no more than he seemed to be, a Jew, the son of a Gali- 
lean carpenter, educated in a village in the rudest part of Judea — 
that such a man, being a man and no more, could have lived so long 



840 THE LIFE OF CHE1ST. 

upon the earth without saying or doing anything which could belie 
the idea that in him dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, ap- 
pears to us to present far greater difficulties to faith than does the 
doctrine of the Incarnation. 

It is not so much, however, as one possessed of it by original and 
Dative right, that Jesus lays claim here to supreme and unlimited 
power. He speaks of the "all power in heaven and in earth" as 
"given" — given by another ; by Him whose law he had so magnified, 
whose character he had so glorified in his life and by his death. It 
was as the fruit and reward of his obedience unto death that he was 
invested by the Father with unlimited authority and power. One of 
the conditions of the everlasting Covenant was that, crucified in 
weakness, Christ should be raised in power ; that, on account of his 
having suffered unto death, he should be crowned with glory and 
honor. And his first word to this company on the mountain-side is 
the first announcement from his own lips, that, his great decease hav- 
ing been accomplished, this condition of the covenant had been ful- 
filled ; that he had entered upon possession of the mediatorial sove- 
reignty. Constituted heir of all things, the great inheritance had to 
be acquired, the kingdom won. The heir still lingers for a season 
upon earth, but he is on his way to the throne on which he is to sit 
down, covered with glory and honor, angels and principalities and 
powers being made subject to him. Jesus indeed speaks here as if 
he were already upon that throne. As in the upper chamber, when 
the agony of the garden and the sufferings of the cross still lay before 
him, he spake as if the passion were over, as if heaven had been 
already entered, saying, "I have glorified thee on the earth, I have 
finished the work which thou gavest me to do. Father, I will that 
those whom thou hast given me be with me where I am;" so here, 
on the mountain-side, he speaks as if the cloud had already carried 
him away — as if his feet were already standing within the throne of 
universal sovereignty — as if, having raised him by his mighty power 
from the dead, the Father had already set him on his own right hand 
in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power, and 
might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this 
world, but also in that which is to come ; had put all things under 
his feet, and given him to be Head over all to the church, which is 
his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. 

It is from the lofty elevation thus attained, it is as clothed with 
the supreme, limitless authority and power thus acquired, that Jesus 
issues the great commission to the church, Go ye therefore and teach or 
make disciples of all nations ; or as you have it in another evangelist, 



THE GREAT COMMISSION. 841 

Go, preach the gospel to every creature. A mission so comprehen- 
sive was as novel as it was sublime. Familiarity with the idea blunts 
the edge of our wonder, but let us recollect that at the time when, m 
a remote Jewish province, gathering a few hundred followers around 
him, Jesus sent them forth, assigning to them a task which should 
not be accomplished till every creature had heard the glad tidings of 
salvation in his name, and all nations had been brought to sit under 
his shadow — that at that time the very idea of a religion equally ad- 
dressed to, and equally adapted to all nations, equally needed by, and 
equally suited to every child of Adam, was wholly new, had never 
been broached, never been attempted to be realized. There was no 
form or system of idolatry that ever aimed at, or was indeed capable 
of such universality of embrace. The object of its worship was either 
confined to certain definite localities ; the gods of certain mountains, 
groves, or streams, whose worship was incapable of transfer; or they 
were the offspring and expression of some peculiar state of society, 
whether savage or civilized, suited only to that particular state or 
condition of humanity in which they had their birth and being. It 
is true that in all the more educated nations of antiquity, there were 
men who soared far above the vulgar prejudices and superstitions of 
their times, whose religion, such as it was, had certainly nothing 
about it of that confinement by which the popular belief and wor- 
ship were characterized, but if free thus from one kind of confine- 
ment, their religion was all the more liable to another. Unfitted for 
the many, it was by eminence the religion of the few. Its disciples 
gloried in its exclusiveness. It would have lost half its charm in their 
eyes, had the people at large adopted it. But there was no danger 
of that. It was essentially unfitted for the multitude. Its votaries 
would have laughed at the idea of trying to convert even a single 
tillage to their faith. Such, in the days of Jesus Christ, in all 
heathen countries, were the multiform idolatries of the many, the ex- 
clusive faith of the few. In Judea, it was somewhat different. Sa- 
cred books were circulating there, in which, under dark prophetic 
symbols, hints were given of a future gathering of all the nations 
under one great king and head. But these hints were universally 
misunderstood and misapplied. Amid all the confined and exclusive 
religions of that period, there was not one more confined, or more 
exclusive, than Judaism. Both socially and religiousb the Jew of 
ihe Saviour's time was one of the most shut up and bigoted of the 
race. Everything about him — his dress, his food, his domestic cus- 
toms, nis religious ceremonies — marked him off by a broad wall ol 
separation from the rest of the species. He gloried in this distinc- 



842 THE LIFE OF OHPwIST. 

fcion. He thought and spoke of himself and his brethren as the elect 
of God, the holy, the clean : the Gentiles were the dogs, the polluted, 
the unclean. His attachment to his religion, as a faith proclaimed 
exclusively to his forefathers, and bequeathed by them as a national 
heritage to their children, was intense. His faith and his patriotism 
were one, and the deeper the patriotism the narrower the faith. And 
jet it is among this people ; it is from one who was brought up in 
one of its wildest districts ; it is from one for whom birth, position, 
education, had done nothing in the way of weaning him from the 
common prejudices of his countrymen, making him in that respect 
different from any other Jew ; it is from one who, save occasional 
visits to Jerusalem, never moved beyond the neighborhood of a Gali- 
lean village, nor shared in the benefits of any other society than it 
supplied; it is from him that a religion emanates whose professed 
object is to gather into one, within its all-embracing arms, the whole 
human family. The very broaching of a project so original, so com- 
prehensive, so sublime, at that time and in those circumstances, 
staods out as an event unique in the history of our race. In vain 
shall we try to explain it on the supposition that it was the self- sug- 
gested scheme of the son of a Galilean tradesman. The very time 
and manner of its earthly birth claims for it a heavenly origin. Had 
Jesus Christ done nothing more than this — set the idea for the first 
time afloat, that it was desirable and practicable to frame for the 
world a religious faith and worship which should have nothing of the 
confinements of country, or period, or caste, but be alike adapted to 
all countries, all periods, all kinds and classes of men — he would have 
stood by himself and above all others. 

But he did more than this. He not only announced the project, 
but he devised the instrument by which it was to be accomplished; 
he put that instrument in its complete and perfect form into the 
hands of those by whom it was to be employed. Study the history 
of all other revolutions, civil or religious, which have taken place 
upon this earth, and you will find it to be true of all of them, that the 
methods by which they were wrought out were at first devised by 
different men and at lengthened intervals, and afterwards perfected 
by slow degrees. The men engaged in effecting them had to feel 
their way forward ; had often to retrace their steps; had often to cast 
aside an old instrument because it was found to be useless, or be- 
cause a new and better one had been fallen upon in its stead. It has 
not been so with the establishment and propagation upon the earth 
of the religion of Jesus Christ. The instrumentality employed here 
has been the same from the beginning. It has never asked for, be- 



THE GEEAT COMMISSION. 843 

cause it never needed> improvement or change. We have it now in 
our hands in the same form in which it was put by Christ himself 
into the hands of the first disciples of the faith. The experience of 
bo many centuries has detected no flaw, revealed no weakness, pro- 
vided no substitute. When Jesus said, Go, make disciples of all na- 
tions, he announced — and that in the simplest, least ostentations 
way, as if there were no novelty in the project, no difficulty in its 
execution, as if it were the most natural thing in the world that it 
should be taken up, as if it were the surest thing that it could be car- 
ried out — he announced the most original, the broadest, the sublimest 
enterprise that ever human hands have been called upon to accom- 
plish. And when he said, Go, preach the gospel to every creature, 
he supplied, in its complete and perfect form, the instrument by 
which it was to be realized. And that simple gospel of the grace of 
God preached, proclaimed, made known among all nations, to every 
creature, has it not proved itself fitted for the work? No nation can 
claim this gospel as peculiarly its own. No class or kind of human 
beings can appropriate it to themselves. It speaks with the same 
voice, it addresses the same message to the wandering savage and to 
the civilized citizen, to the most abandoned reprobate and to the most 
correct and fastidious moralist. Its immediate and direct appeal is 
to the naked human conscience, to man as a sinner before his Maker. 
Wholly overlooking and ignoring all other distinctions of character 
and condition, it regards us all as on the common level of condemna- 
tion, under the sentence of that la w which is holy and just and good. 
To each of us, as righteously condemned, it offers a free, full pardon 
through the death, an immediate and entire acceptance through the 
merits and mediation, of Jesus Christ. It presents the means and 
influences by which a holy character and life may be attained on 
earth, and it opens up the way to a blissful immortality hereafter. 
If, looking simply at the outward means employed, we were asked 
wherein lay the secret of the immediate and immense power which 
the Christian religion at first exerted upon such multitudes of men, 
we should say that it was in the call it carried with it to every man, 
just as it found him, to repent, and repenting, enter into immediate 
peace with his Maker through Jesus Christ ; in the assurance that it 
gave of God's perfect good-will to him, His perfect readiness to for- 
give and accept; the proclamation which it made that, by Christ'g 
death, every let or hinderance had been removed, and that every sin- 
ful child of Adam was invited to enter into that rest which Christ had 
provided for all who came to him. Only think, when these tidings 
were new, and when they were at once heartily and cordially believed 



344 THE LIFE OF OHBIST. 

in, what a wonderful revolution in man's inner being they were fitted 
to effect ! Can you wonder when, to a world grown weary of its fol- 
lies, its idolatries, its philosophies, its gropings in the dark, its strug- 
gles to find the truth, its passionate desire to know something of that 
world beyond the grave, for the first time it was told that God was 
not a God afar off but very near at hand, for he had sent his own Son 
into the world to make such a revelation of him that it could be said 
that whosoever had seen him had seen the Father also ; it was told 
that a life beyond the grave was no longer a matter of speculation, 
for Christ, the Son of the Eternal, had risen as the first-fruits of a 
coming general resurrection of the dead ; it was told that access to 
God and to God's full favor was no longer a thing of doubt and time 
and difficulty, to be reached, if reached at all, through prayer and 
priests, and services and sacrifices, for a new and direct and open 
way had been revealed by God himself, through which any one might 
step at once into his gracious presence, into the full light of his rec- 
onciled countenance ; it was told that the forgiveness of all his past 
sin was no longer a matter about which, to the last moment of his 
life, a man was to be kept hanging between hope and fear, for through 
this man Christ Jesus there was offered to all who would accept it 
an instant remission of all their sins; it was told that poor, weak, 
tempted, erring, sinful, suffering man had no longer to regard himself 
as an alien, an exile from the world of the pure and the blessed, 
frowned on by the beings or powers he worshipped, his whole life 
turned into a struggle by one or other kind of propitiatory offerings 
to keep on something like good terms with his conscience and his 
God, for there was One who had loved and suffered and died to save 
him ; a man like himself, and yet a God ; a man to pity, a God to 
protect; a man to sympathize, a God to succor; whose presence, 
companionship, friendship, were waiting to cheer his path in lif e, and 
illumine for him the dark valley of the shadow of death ; can yon 
wonder that when, in all its simplicity and in all its fulness of comfort 
and consolation, the gospel of the grace of God was first proclaimed 
to sinful men, it was hailed by thousands as indeed glad tidings from 
the far country ? Or, looking at the Scripture records, can you won- 
der that the three thousand who were converted on the day of Pen- 
tecost, as they broke bread from house to house did eat their meat 
with such gladness and singleness of heart, praising God ? Can yon 
wonder, when with one accord the people of Samaria gave heed to 
the things spoken by Philip, preaching peace by Jesus Christ, that 
there was great joy m that city ? Can you wonder, when the Ethn> 
pian treasurer had his eyes opened to see who it was who had been 



THE GKEAT COMMISSION. 845 

wounded for his transgressions and bruised for his iniquities, and 
found in Jesus the very Saviour that he needed, that he went on his 
way rejoicing ? Can you wonder, when at Antioch and elsewhere the 
Gentiles heard for the first time all the words of this life, that "they 
were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord"? Many and great 
indeed were the hinderances which arose : slow often and difficult the 
progress that was made. But the way in which these hinderances 
generally acted, was to cloud with some obscurity the simple tidings 
of the love of God in Christ to sinful men ; to close the door that his 
grace had opened ; to fetter with this condition or with that, the full 
reconciliation with our Maker into which we are all invited at once 
to enter ; more or less, in fact, to assimilate the religion of Jesus to 
all the other religions which have represented God's favor as a thing 
to be toiled for through life, and to be won, if won at all, only at its 
close — the life itself to be passed in a sustained uncertainty as to 
whether it would be got at last or not — whereas it is the distinction 
and the glory and the power of the gospel of the grace of God, that 
it holds out to us at the very first, as a gratuity, which it has cost 
Christ much to purchase, but which it costs us nothing to acquire — 
the forgiving, loving favor of the Most High. It asks us to dismiss 
here all our doubts and fears ; to know and believe the love which 
God has to us ; to see in Jesus one in whom we can undoubtingly 
confide, who is absolutely to be depended on, on whom it is impossi- 
ble that too much confidence can be reposed ; who by every way 
that love could devise, or the spirit of self-sacrifice achieve, has 
tried to get us to trust alone, unhesitatingly, habitually, for ever in 
him. 

What is it — how often do we ask these hearts of ours — what is it 
which keeps us from welcoming such glad tidings ? What is it which 
keeps these tidings from filling our hearts with a full and continued 
joy ? What is it which keeps us from trusting one so entirely worthy 
of our confidence as Jesus Christ ? Nothing whatever in the tidings ; 
nothing in Him of whom the tidings speak. 

Try if you can construct any form of words better fitted than 
those which meet you in the Bible, clearly and forcibly to express 
the idea that God is now in Jesus Christ most thoroughly prepared, 
is most entirely willing, to receive at once into his favor every re- 
pentant, returning child of Adam, and that there is not a single mail 
anywhere, or upon any ground, shut out from coming and accepting 
this pardon — coming and entering into this peace. " Ho ! every one 
that thirsteth, come ye to the waters. If any man thirst, let him 
oome to me aud drink. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 



846 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

heavy laden, and I will give you rest. God so loved the world, as tc 
give his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him might 
not perish, but have everlasting life. The Spirit and the Bride say, 
Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is 
athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life 
freely." Any one — every one — all — whosoever; we know no other 
words which could more thoroughly take in all, excluding none. 
These, however, are but words. The great thing is to get fixed in 
the mind and heart that which these words point to and express ; 
that the God whom we have offended approaches us in love, in Christ, 
assuring us of a gracious reception ; the embrace of a Father's guid- 
ing, protecting arms, and the shelter hereafter of a Father's secure 
and blessed home. 

" Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and 
of the Holy Ghost." Our Lord's forerunner had adopted the practice 
of baptizing those who desired to be regarded as his followers. His 
baptism, however, was prefigurative and incomplete. It was simply 
a baptism unto repentance. It was a faith only in the kingdom as 
at hand that was required of those who submitted to it. But the 
kingdom had come. The day of Pentecost, on which it was to be 
visibly erected, was drawing near. Another higher and fuller bap- 
tism was now to be proclaimed, and thenceforward to be administered. 

Baptizing into the name : not simply in the name, of the Father, 
the Son, and the Holy Ghost; this might mean no more than per- 
forming the rite in the name, that is, by the authority of God. The 
name of God, we know, is the term commonly employed in Scripture 
to indicate the character and the nature of the Supreme. When the 
expression meets us then — the name of the Father, the Son, and the 
Holy Ghost — we understand it as expressive of the one nature re- 
vealed to us in the three personalities of the Triune Jehovah. Now 
to be baptized into that name is to be taken up into, to be incorpo- 
rated with him whose name is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The 
term is expressive or symbolic, not of a mere outward and formal 
acknowledgment or confession of our faith in the Divinity, as he has 
been pleased to reveal himself to us under that mysterious distinc- 
tion of a threefold personality ; but of an inward and spiritual union, 
communion, fellowship, with the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost. 
The Israelites were all baptized unto Moses, and, as so baptized, were 
taken up into, and incorporated with, that spiritual community of 
which the Mosaic was an external type. They did all eat the same 
spiritual meat, and did all drink the same spiritual drink; derived all 
their strength and refreshment from the same spiritual sources. A nd 



THE GREAT COMMISSION. 847 

even so are all baptized into the name of the Father, the Son, and 
the Holy Ghost, emblematic of that oneness with each and all of the 
three persons of the Trinity, which the Saviour had in his eye when 
he prayed for his own: "That they all may be one; as thou> Father, 
art in me, and I in ihee, that they also may be one in us." And that 
same oneness through Christ with the Father and the Holy Ghost, is 
it not equally if not still more distinctly and impressively held out to 
our view in the sacrament of the Supper? "The cup of blessing 
which we bless, is it not the communion, or common participation, of 
the blood of Christ ? The bread which we break, is it not the com- 
munion, or common participation, of the body of Christ ? For we, 
being many, are one bread and one body; for we are all partakers of 
that one bread." Closest, loftiest, most blessed of all fellowships, 
that to which in Jesus Christ we are elevated, and of which our par- 
ticipation of the two sacraments of the church is the external sign. 

"Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have com- 
manded you." The crowning glory of the gospel — of its proclamation 
of a free and full justification before God, alone through the merits 
of the Saviour — is this, that it opens the way and supplies the motive 
to a right and dutiful discharge of all commanded duty. Enthroning 
Christ in the heart, planting deep within it, as its strongest and most 
constraining motive, a supreme love to him, it produces an obedience 
which springs not from fear, but from love. " If ye love me," said 
Jesus to his disciples, "keep my commandments." He did not ques- 
tion or suspect the reality of their love. He knew there was a kind 
of love they all had to him. But that affection, tender as it was, 
might not be strong; regarding him mainly in the character of a 
companion or friend, it might fail to recognize him in the character 
of their Master, their Lord. 'If ye indeed love me, then,' says Jesus 
to them and to us, ' let not love die out in the mere feeling of attach- 
ment to my person ; let it find its becoming and appropriate expres- 
sion in the keeping of my commandments; so shall it be preserved 
from evaporating in the emotion of the hour; so shall it be consoli- 
dated into a fixed, a strong, a permanent principle of action.' All 
love, even that of equal to equal, if unexpressed, if unembodied, has 
a strong tendency to decline ; but if it be love of a dependent to a 
superior, of a servant to a master, the love which does not clothe 
itself in obedience, becomes spurious as well as weak. A bare ac- 
knowledgment in words, or in some formal act of bare profession of 
the fatherly or masterly relationship — what is it worth if the author- 
ity of the father be disregarded, the orders of the master be diso- 
beyed ? If we fail to regard Christ as the Lord of the conscience, 



818 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

the lawgiver of the life; if our obligations to be all and do all he has 
commanded be unfelt; if the love we cherish to him go not forth into 
action — such barren and unfruitful affection will not be recognized 
bj him, who hath not only said, "If je love me, ye will keep my 
commandments," but also, " He that hath my commaDdments and 
keepeth them, he it is that loveth me." On the other hand, if our 
love to Christ, however faint and feeble it be at the first, has not only 
an eye to see him and admire his beauty, but an ear to hear him and 
obey his word ; if under the strong conviction that, to offer love with- 
out service to such a Saviour as Jesus is, would be but another vari- 
ety of that mockery to which he was subjected in the judgment- hall 
of Pilate ; if the sincere and honest effort be put forth to obey the 
precepts he has given for the regulation of our heart and life — then 
shall each fresh effort of that kind, however short it fall of its destined 
aim, exert the happiest influence upon the love from which it springs, 
quickening, expanding, elevating, intensifying it. Each new attempt 
to do his will shall reveal something more of the loveableness of the 
^Redeemer's character. The loving and the doing shall help each 
other on, till the loving shall make the doing light; and by the doing 
shall the loving be itself made perfect. 

And one marked peculiarity of the obedience thus realized shall 
be this, that all things whatsoever Christ hath commanded will be 
attempted, at least, if not discharged. "Ye are my friends," said 
Jesus, "if ye do whatsoever I command you;" a test of friendship 
very sad and hopeless in the application of it, were it meant that 
whatsoever Christ has commanded must be done, up to the full meas- 
ure and extent of his requirement, before we could be reckoned as his 
friends. Then were that friendship put altogether beyond our reach. 
A test, however, both true and capable of immediate and universal 
application, if we regard it as meaning that it is by the universality 
of its embrace, and not by its perfection in any one individual in- 
stance, that the obedience of the Christian is characterized; that there 
shall not be one command which is freely, wilfully, and habitually 
violated ; not one known duty which is not habitually tried to be dis- 
charged. As ever then we hope to be acknowledged as his friends, 
his true and faithful followers, let us esteem every precept he hath 
given concerning everything to be right ; and let us give ourselves to 
the unreserved, unrestricted doing of his will. Matt. 5 : 21, 27. 

"Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." 
Jesus nad spoken much to his disciples about his departure from 
them, about his leaving them alone. "I go my way," he had said to 
them in the upper chamber, " and none of you asketh, Whither goest 



THE GHEAT COMMISSION. 849 

thou? A little while and ye shall not see me, and again a little while 
and je shall see me, because I go to the Father. I came forth from 
the Father, and am come into the world ; again, I leave the world, 
and go to the Father. And ye now therefore have sorrow ; but I will 
see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man 
taketh from you." It was in such an affectionate, sympathizing way 
that Jesus sought beforehand to prepare the minds and hearts of his 
disciples for the shock of his death, the sorrow of his departure. For 
a little while they did not see him ; he was lost in the darkness of the 
sepulchre. Again, for a little while, they did see him, on those few 
occasions when he made himself visible to them after his resurrec- 
tion. Even, however, on one of the earliest of these appearances, he 
seemed at pains to remove the idea from his disciples' minds that he 
had returned in order to abide. "Touch me not," was his language 
to Mary, "for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my 
brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your 
Father, and to my God and your God." It was as one on his way to 
the Father, tarrying but a little while on the earth, that he desired 
during the forty days to be recognized. But now, when in this great 
interview on the mountain-side, he manifests forth his glory, takes to 
himself his great power, announces the universal sovereignty which 
had been put into his hands as the Mediator, issues the great com- 
mission upon which, in all ages, his followers were to act, he closes 
by speaking, not of his approaching departure, but of his continued, 
his abiding presence : " Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end 
of the world." The Omnipotent reveals himself thus as the Omni- 
present also : ' Go ye into all nations, go to the farthest corner of the 
habitable globe, but know that, go where you will, my presence goeth 
with you. Labor on, generation after generation, but know that the 
time shall never come when I shall leave you or forsake you. My 
bodily presence I remove ; with the eye of sense you soon shall see 
me no more ; but my spiritual presence shall never be withdrawn ; it 
shall abide with you continually, even to the end of the world, till I 
come again, till that time arrive when it shall no longer be said that 
I will come to you to live with you — when I shall come to take you 
to myself, that where I am there ye may be also.' 

The richest legacy he could have left to it is this promise of his 
abiding presence with the church. Looking at the church generally, 
at the church in any one country or in any one city, any one section 
of the church — we may often wonder and be afraid as we contemplate 
the difficulties she has to contend with in going forth to execute the 
great errand upon which she has been sent. This is the light, hOW- 
Ufe of Chriai. 54 



850 THE LIFE OF CHRIST, 

ever, in all the darkness. All power has been given to Christ in 
heaven and earth; he has been constituted Head over all things for 
the church. This headship over all the principalities and powers of 
darkness, this power over all things in heaven and earth, shall he not 
employ in helping onward the great movement which is to give him 
the heathen for his inheritance, the uttermost parts of the earth for 
his possession ? 

It is not indeed by bare might and power that this great con- 
quest of the world is to be won. When Jesus says, "All power is 
given unto me in heaven and earth," he does not add, Go ye there- 
fore, and by the employment of so much of that power as I may 
please to communicate, subdue all mine enemies, uproot all rival 
thrones, set up and extend thy kingdom. No; but, Go teach and 
preach, instruct, persuade; the conversion of the world to me must 
be a thing of willingness, and not of compulsion. They must be 
taught; for how shall they call on him in whom they have not 
believed, and how shall they believe on him of whom they have not 
heard, and how shall they hear without a preacher, and how shall 
they preach except they be sent ? As it is written, " How beautiful 
are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad 
tidings of good things!" But not only must they be taught, the 
people must be made willing in the day of the Lord's power— a 
power which shall work on them, not from without but from within, 
drawing them to himself. But how shall that power be brought into 
full and living operation ? It comes, it works according to our faith, 
in answer to our prayers ; it comes through the realizing of the pres- 
ence of the Saviour; the pleading for the promise of the Spirit to be 
fulfilled. Do we ask ourselves why it is that so many hundred years 
have rolled away since these words were spoken in Galilee; since 
the world was given by him into the hands of his followers, to go oul 
upon it and reclaim it unto God, and yet so little progress has beeD 
made towards the great consummation ; not half the globe yet evei 
nominally won? The answer is at hand: Our lack of faith; ou 
lack of prayer ; our lack of efforts undertaken in the name, and pros- 
ecuted in the promised strength of the Redeemer. 

But this great parting promise of our Lord is to be taken by us 
as addressed not merely to the church at large in her collective 
capacity, or as engaged in her public work of propagating the truti 
as it is in Jesus. It is to be taken as addressed to every individual 
Christian. "Behold," says Jesus, "I stand at the door, and knock 
if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him 
and will sup with him, and he with me." "If a man love me, he will 






THE GREAT COMMISSION. 851 

keep my words, and ray Father will love him, and we will come unto 
him, and make our abode with him." I will come; I and my Father 
will come. We will come. Was ever such a plural used as that! 
Who is he who associates himself in this way with the omnipresent 
and omnipotent Jehovah, who engages for the Father, and what he 
©ngages for the Father undertakes equally himself? We will come 
to him, not to paj a transient visit, not as the wayfaring man who 
turns aside to tarry but for a night. We will take up our abode 
with him. To have these words of Jesus realized in our daily, 
hourly life, to know and believe that he is indeed with us, beside us, 
has come to us, has taken up his abode with us, this is our comfort 
and our strength. Nothing short of this will do. No general belief 
in all that Jesus was and did and suffered here on earth, no belief in 
anything about him, nothing but himself in living, loving presence, 
seen and felt by us, as a presence as real as that of the closest com- 
panionship of life; as real, but a thousand times closer, a thousand 
times more precious. 

How well he knows this who has said and done so much to 
encourage his people in all ages to realize his presence with them in 
all the stages of their earthly life! A famine drives Isaac from 
Judea. He halts at Gerar, meditating a still farther flight. The 
Lord appears to him and says, " Go not down into Egypt ; dwell 
in the land which I shall tell thee of. Sojourn in this land, and 
I will be with thee and bless thee." Let the patriarch but know 
and feel that the Lord is with him, and no fear shall drive him 
from the place which that God hath appointed as his habitation. 
Sleeping Jacob lies with his head upon the stony pillow ; the vision 
comes to him by night ; the Lord speaks to him from the top of the 
mystic ladder : " Behold, L am with thee, and will keep thee in all 
places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land, 
for I will not leave thee till I have done that which I have spoken to thee 
of." Let Jacob but carry a sense of that presence along with him, 
and his solitary path and his fears of exile shall be lightened, and 
that future, so dark to him as he fled from his father's presence, shall 
be turned into light. It was a heavy task for hands like Joshua's to 
undertake to be successor to such a man as Moses. When that 
great leader of the people died, how destitute and helpless must 
Joshua have felt ! What a crowd of difficulties must have risen up 
before his mind, as standing in the way of the invasion and the con • 
quest of Canaan ! But all his discouragements were met by thai 
word of Jehovah : " Be strong and of a good courage ; as I was with 
Moses, so I will be with thee ; I will not fail thee nor forsake thee. 



852 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days oi 
thy life." Solomon had almost as difficult a succession to fill aa 
Joshua. It was no easy duty to take David's place, and to carry 
out his great design. But there was a way in which he might have 
been strengthened for the task. " If," said the Lord to him, " thou 
wilt hearken unto all that I command thee, I ivill be with thee, and 
build thee a sure house." And still, whatever be the peculiarities of 
our lot in life, the nature of the duties we have to discharge, the 
difficulties to contend with, the trials to bear, the temptations to 
meet, still it is the fulfilment of that most gracious promise, I iviU be 
with thee, which alone can bear us up, and bear us through. Let us 
rest more simply and entirely on it, trying, as we advance in life, to 
have more and more of the spirit of the Psalmist, as he looked out 
upon the future and said, " I will fear no evil, for thou art with me , 
thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Surely goodness and mercy 
shall follow me all the days of my life ; and I will dwell in the house 
of the Lord for ever." 

OUTLINE STUDIES. 

Eight of the ten resurrection appearances of our Saviour have now 
been surveyed. The first six took place in Judea, the seventh and 
eighth in Galilee. For the ninth and tenth and the ascension the 
present and closing Study returns to the field of Judea and to Jerusalem. 

It should be said, however, that nothing is known about the ninth 
appearance beyond the simple statement in the fifteenth chapter of the 
first Epistle to the Corinthians that it was to James the Lord's brother. 
As he and the mother of Christ are in the company assembling for 
prayer in the upper room at Jerusalem immediately after the ascension, 
it seems probable that Jesus' appearance to his brother was at Jerusalem 
and that it was the means of James' conversion. 

The tenth and concluding appearance was to the eleven at Jerusalem 
just preceding the ascension. In connection with this appearance 
Jesus gave explicit instructions to the eleven to tarry at Jerusalem 
in prayer till they should be endued with power by the coming of the 
Holy Spirit upon them. Then, beginning in Jerusalem, the good news 
of salvation is to be spread through Judea and Samaria and unto the 
uttermost part of the world. 

His closing instructions being completed, Jesus leads the eleven 
out to the Mount of Olives, parts from them in blessing, and ascends, 
a cloud receiving him out of their sight. 

The earthly manifestation of our Lord begun at Bethlehem is 
sublimely completed by his ascension. Thenceforward he has worked 
and still works through his spiritual presence, seeing of the travail of 
his soul and bringing countless hosts unto glory. 



THE ASCENSION. 853 

PART VI. FORTY DAYS AND THE ASCENSION. 
Study 25. Final Appearances at Jerusalem and Ascension. 

(1) Summary of the earlier appearances 853 

(2) TWO FINAL APPEARANCES 853 

a. To James, the Lord's brother 853 

b. To the eleven at the time of the ascension 853 

(3) The Lord's parting interview with the apostles 854-859 

a. They have returned to Jerusalem 854, 855 

b. Jesus expounds the Scriptures concerning himself 856-859 

c. He shows the widening sphere of the gospel 859 

d. He promises the baptism of the Holy Spirit for power. 859 

(4) The course to the Mount of Olives 860 

a. Through the streets 860 

b. Through the city gate 860 

c. Past the Kedron and Gethsemane 860 

d. Ascent of and across the summit of Olivet 860 

e. Toward Bethany 860 

(5) The Ascension 860-862 

a. He lifts his hands in blessing 860 

b. He rises 860 

c. The cloud receives him 860 

d. Associated words of angels and ideas of the second advent 861, 862 

H ■ 

IX. 

The Ascension.* 

There are ten appearances of our Saviour after his resurrection 
recorded in the New Testament. So many as five of them occurred 
on the day of the resurrection : those, namely, to Mary Magdalene, 
to the Galilean women, to Peter, to the two disciples on their way to 
Emmaus, to the ten apostles and others assembled in the evening 
within the upper chamber. The sixth appearance was to the eleven 
and the rest on the evening of the seventh day from that on which 
he rose from the dead. The seventh — spoken of by John as the 
third time that he showed himself, inasmuch as it was the third 
occasion upon which he had met with them collectively, or in any 
considerable number together — was to the seven disciples by the sea 
of Tiberias. The eighth was the great manifestation on the inoTin- 
tain side of Galilee. The ninth, of which we should have known 
nothing but for the simple record of it preserved in the fifteenth 
chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, was to James the 
brother of the Lord; and finally, the tenth, on the occasion of the 
ascension. There may have been other unrecorded appearances of 
our Lord. It is nowhere said in the gospels or epistles that there 
were none else besides the ones related therein. But the nature of 

* Luke 24 : 44-53 ; Acts 1 : 3^8. 



854 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

the case, and the manner of the narrative, force upon us the belief 
that if there were any such, they must have partaken of the charac- 
ter of the manifestation to James; having a private and personal, 
rather than a public object in view. But why, if his interviews with 
his followers were so few, his intercourse with them so brief, so 
broken, so reserved, did Jesus remain on earth so long ? Why were 
so many as forty days of an existence such as his spent by him in 
this way ? It may seem useless even to put a question to which no 
satisfactory answer can be given, inasmuch as, beyond the mere 
statement that he afforded thereby many infallible proofs of his 
resurrection, nothing explicit is said in the Scriptures as to the par- 
ticular object or design of this lingering of our Lord so long upon 
the earth. And yet it is scarcely possible for us to forget, or to fail 
in being struck by it, that this period of forty days was one which 
had already been signalized in the history of redemption ; and look- 
ing at the other instances in which it meets our eye in the Scripture 
narrative, we are tempted to put the question, Was it as Moses was 
withdrawn from men, to spend these forty days in fasting and prayer 
on the mount with God, as the fit and solemn preparation for the 
promulgation of the law through his hands at Sinai? Was it as 
Elijah was carried away into the wilderness, to fast and pray there 
for forty days, to prepare him for his great work as the restorer of 
the law in Israel? Was it as Jesus himself, after his baptism, was 
led by the Spirit into the wilderness, to fast there forty days, and at 
the end to be tempted of the devil, to fit him for that earthly minis- 
try which was to close in his death upon the cross ? Was it even so 
that now, for another forty days, our Lord was detained on earth, as 
the suitable preface or prelude to his entrance upon that higher 
stage of the mediatorial work in which he is to sit upon the throne, 
henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool ? 

Passing, however, from a topic which must remain shrouded in 
obscurity, let us take up the incidents of our Lord's parting inter- 
view with his apostles. They have returned from Galilee, and are 
now once more at Jerusalem. There might have been some specific 
instructions to that effect delivered in private to themselves, or com- 
municated to them through James, which brought the disciples back 
from Galilee to Jerusalem. But we do not need to suppose that it was 
bo, in order to account for the movement; for let us remember that 
this period of forty days was immediately preceded by the great fes- 
tival of the Passover, and followed by that of Pentecost, both of 
which required the presence of the apostles at Jerusalem. It was 
not till the first of them was over that they could well leave the Holy 



THE ASCENSION. 855 

City, and so you find them remaining there for a week after the 
resurrection. And now the promised and appointed meeting in 
Galilee having taken place, the approach of the second festival 
naturally invited their return. However it came about, the fortieth 
day after the resurrection saw the eleven and their companions once 
more assembled at Jerusalem. Christ's former meetings with them 
there collectively had been in the evening, in the closed chamber, 
where they had assembled in secret for fear of the Jews. This last 
one, though we know not when or how it commenced, may have 
begun in the same upper chamber already hallowed by the former 
meetings, but it was obviously at an earlier hour, and took place 
in the broad daylight. The first, or earlier part of it — that spent 
within the city — appears to have been devoted to the renewal and 
expansion of such instructions as he had delivered to the two dis- 
ciples on their journey to Emmaus. We gather this from the forty- 
fourth to the forty-seventh verses of the twenty -fourth chapter of 
St. Luke's gospel. It is very natural to read these verses in imme- 
diate connection with those which go before, and to regard them 
simply as a continuation of the narrative of what occurred at that 
meeting on the evening of the resurrection day. And so indeed, in 
common with the majority of readers, we were at first disposed to 
regard them. By reading on to the end of the chapter, however, 
you will at once perceive that the narrator, without any note or 
mark of time, has condensed into one short and continuous state- 
ment all that he had then to say about the period between the resur- 
rection and the ascension; omitting so entirely all mention of any 
after day or after meetings, that if you had had nothing but this last 
chapter of Luke to guide you, you might have imagined — indeed, 
could not well have thought anything else — that the ascension had 
taken place on the very evening of the resurrection day. The same 
narrative, however, Luke has, in the first chapter of the Acts, filled 
up, and broken down into its parts the brief and summary notice 
with which he had closed his gospel. And it is when we compare 
what he says in the one writing with what he says in the other, 
that we become persuaded that the verses from the forty-fourth 
downward of the last chapter in his gospel belongs to and de- 
scribes, not what happened in the evening interview on the day 
of the resurrection, but what happened in the last interview of all 
on the day of the ascension ; for you will notice as common to the 
two accounts, the peremptory injunction laid upon the apostles, 
that they were not to leave Jerusalem till the promise of the Fa- 
ther had been fulfilled, and the baptism of the Spirit had been 



856 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

conferred, Such an injunction would not have been proper to the 
occasion of the first interview in the upper chamber. They were to 
leave Jerusalem, and in point of fact did leave it, after that meeting, 
to see the Lord in Galilee. According, however, to the account con- 
tained in the Acts of the Apostles, it was after the command had 
been given that they should not depart from Jerusalem that Jesus 
spake to them of their being witnesses unto him in Jerusalem, and 
in all Judea and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the 
earth ; an announcement which corresponds with that contained in 
the forty-seventh and forty-eighth verses of the chapter in the gos- 
pel, leading us naturally to conclude that these verses relate to the 
final meeting on the ascension day. We must make a break some- 
where in the chapter of the gospel; and it seems, on the whole, 
much more natural and consistent to make it at the end of the forty- 
third that at the forty-eighth verse. 

Adopting, then, this idea, we have the fact before us that, in the 
first instance, when he met with the eleven in the course of that day 
on which he was taken up into heaven, our Saviour occupied himself 
with showing them how needful it was that all things that had been 
written in the law of Moses and in the Prophets and in the Psalms 
regarding him should be fulfilled ; with showing them how exactly 
many of their ancient prophecies had met with their fulfilment in the 
manner and circumstances of his death ; with showing them how it 
behooved him to suffer, and through suffering to reach the throne of 
that kingdom which he came to set up on the earth ; at once unfold- 
ing to them the Scriptures, and opening their minds to understand 
them. As on the first, so now on the last day of his being with them, 
this was the chosen theme on which he dwelt; this the lesson upon 
which a larger amount of pains and care was bestowed by our Lord 
after his resurrection than upon any other. What weight and worth 
does this attach to these Old Testament testimonies to his Messiah- 
ship ! what a sanction does it lend to our searching of their prophetic 
records, in the belief that we shall find much there pointing, in proph- 
ecy and type and figure, to the Lamb slain before the foundation of 
the earth, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world. 

Our Lord's exposition of these Scriptures could not have been 
wholly in vain. The veil which had been upon the hearts of hia 
apostles in their former reading of the prophecies must have been at 
least partially removed. Their notions of a Messiah coming only to 
conquer, only to restore and establish and extend the old Jewish the- 
ocracy, must have been materially altered and rectified. When, then, 
after all these expositions of their Master — after all the fresh light he 






THE ASCENSION. 857 

had thrown upon the true nature of his kingdom and the manner of 
its establishment, you find them coming to him and saying, " Lord, 
wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" it could 
scarcely be that, ignoring all they had just heard, and clinging still 
to their first belief, they were inquiriDg about an immediate erection 
of a temporal and visible kingdom. Let us rather believe that, accept- 
ing all which Jesus had taught them, admitting now fully the idea of 
a suffering and dying Messiah, their conceptions altered and elevated 
at once as to the kind of kingdom he was to set up, and the way in 
which thai kingdom was to be established and advanced — building 
upon these new foundations, their old spirit of curiosity found now a 
new object on which to fasten. They saw now the need there was 
that Jesus should have suffered all these things ; but still there was 
a kingdom which, through these sufferings, he was to reach, a glory 
on which, when these were over, he was to enter. Still there lay 
within these prophecies, which their minds had now been opened to 
understand, many a wonderful announcement of the part which Israel 
was to take in the erection and consolidation of the Redeemer's 
empire upon this earth. So much had already been accomplished by 
their Lord and Master. He had been wounded for their transgres- 
sions, bruised for their iniquities; was he now to see of the travail 
of his soul; to divide the portion with the great, the spoil with the 
strong ? Were nations that knew not him to run unto him ; was he 
to be exalted as Governor among the nations; were all the ends of 
the earth to remember and turn unto the Lord, all the kindreds of 
the nations to worship before him ; was his law to go forth of Zion. 
and his word from Jerusalem ; and were the nations, as it had been 
predicted they should do in the latter days, the days of the Messiah's 
reign, to be heard saying, " Come and let us go up to the mountain of 
the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob " ? " Lord," they say 
to him, with some such thoughts floating vaguely through their 
minds, "wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" 
Jesus, in answering that question, does not blame, does not rebuke ; 
says nothing that would imply that they were radically wrong in the 
hopes which they were cherishing ; that there was no such kingdom 
as that they were asking about. Nay, rather, does he not assume 
that the kingdom was to be restored to Israel ; that the question was 
only one as to time ; that it was here, in their too eager haste and 
impatience, that the error of the disciples lay? "And he said unto 
them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the 
Father hath put in his own power;" a somewhat different declaration 
from that which Jesus made when, speaking of the time of his own 



858 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

second advent, lie said, " Of that day and hour knoweth no man, not 
the angels of God," no, not even the Son in his character as the great 
prophet and revealer of the future to the church, but the Father 
only. But he does not say that he himself was ignorant of the times 
and the seasons. He only says that it was not for them, the disci- 
ples, to know them. They were among the secret things which the 
Father had reserved and kept within his own power, to reveal when 
and how and to whom he pleased. Would that these words of 
Jesus — among the last he ever uttered — had been sufficiently pon- 
dered by our prophetic interpreters in their pryings into the unknown 
future which lies before us. Curiosity as to that future is not unnat- 
ural. There are so many things to make us desire to see things 
otherwise and better ordered than they now are. There lie too on 
the pages of prophecy so many things which remain yet to be accom- 
plished, such bright and glorious visions of a coming period of tri- 
umph for the truth, a coming reign of peace and virtue and piety 
upon this earth, that we are not disposed to quarrel much with those 
whose eyes are turned longingly upon a future out of whose pregnant 
bosom such great and glorious things are to emerge. But we are 
most imperatively bound to keep our curiosity here under that check 
which the hand of the Bedeemer himself has laid upon it, and to 
remember that he has told us of many things which are yet to come 
to pass, not that we might be able to predict them, to specify before- 
hand the dates of their arrival, but that when they do come to pass 
we might believe. 

But if that kind of knowledge which they were seeking for was 
denied to the disciples, another and better thing was to be given them 
instead. They were to receive power from on high to execute that 
great mission upon which they were to be sent forth ; that mission 
was to consist in their proclaiming everywhere repentance and remis- 
sion of sins in the name of Jesus ; and beginning at Jerusalem as 
the centre, they were to go forth, not as prophets of the future, but 
as witnesses of the past, witnesses for Christ, to carry the glad tidings 
abroad through all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost 
parts of the earth. Three things are noticeable here : 

1. The simplicity of the gospel message as originally promulgated 
by Christ himself. Eepentance, a turning from all evil, a turning with 
irue and penitent spirit to God ; remission of sins, the covering of all 
past transgression by an act of grace on the part of God ; the remis- 
sion of sins, offered in the name of Jesus, coming only, but coming 
directly, immediately, fully, in and through the name of him who is 
the one all-prevalent Mediator between man and God ; such was the 



THEASCENSION. 859 

burden of that simple message which, in parting from them, Jesua 
committed to his disciples to make known over all the earth. 

2. The wider and wider compass of that sphere over which this 
message was to be borne by them. Upon the universality of its 
embrace — its being a message for all mankind, for men of every age 
.ind country, character, and condition — we have already briefly 
commented ; but let us not overlook here the fact as pointing to the 
true order in which all evangelistic labors should be prosecuted, 
that the apostles were to begin at Jerusalem, to go throughout all 
Judea, to penetrate Samaria with the glad tidings, and then to bear 
them on to the uttermost parts of the earth. Whatever else may 
have lain at the bottom of these instructions, this at least is apparent, 
that their own capital, their own country, their own kindred, their 
own immediate neighbors were first to have the tender made to them. 
Are we wrong in interpreting the direction of our Saviour as imply- 
ing that all Christian effort should be from the centre to the circum- 
ference ; should be so directed as to fill the inner circles first — the 
circles of our own heart, our own home, our own city, our own coun- 
try ; and that if, overlooking these, neglecting these, we busy our- 
selves among the broader, wider, outer circles, we are reversing the 
order and running counter to the directions of the Master whom we 
serve ? I shall not venture here to say how much better I think it 
would be for ourselves and for others, for Christianity and for the 
world, if, instead of embarking in enterprises which fascinate by the 
wideness of their scope, but upon which, just because of that wide- 
aess, so much labor is wasted, each man were to cultivate the little 
sphere which lies more immediately around him. 

3. We notice the qualification for Christian work, the baptism of 
the Holy Spirit bestowing the needed power. The apostles had a 
great commission given, a great task assigned; the wide world set 
forth as the field of their future labors. But they were not as yet 
prepared to execute this commission, to take up this work. They 
were to wait in Jerusalem ; to wait some days ; do nothing but w r ait 
and pray and hope; a good and useful lesson in itself, subduing, 
restraining the spirit of eager and impatient self-confidence — a lesson 
which is still in force; that pause, that period of inaction, those ten 
days of stillness between the day of the ascension and the day of 
Pentecost, as full of instruction still to us as of benefit originally to 
the disciples. And when the baptism of fire at last was given, the 
wanting element was supplied, said here by Christ himself to be 
power: * Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with 
power from on high." " Ye shall receive power after that the Holy 



860 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in 
Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost- 
part of the earth." Not knowledge so much was wanted but power; 
a firmer grasp of truth already known; a stronger, deeper, steadier 
attachment to a Saviour already loved ; conviction, affection ripened 
iato abiding, controlling, enduring principle of action; power to be, 
to do, to suffer. Is not that the very thing which in religion we all 
most need; the very thing we feel we cannot ourselves attain; the 
very thing which it requires the baptism of a heavenly influence to 
bestow ? 

But let us follow Jesus to the mount called Glivet. His closing 
counsels given, he leads his disciples out of the city. Did they, in 
open day, pass along through the streets of Jerusalem ? If they did, 
how many wondering eyes would rest upon the well-known group of 
Galilean fishermen ; how many wondering eyes would fix upon the 
leader of that group — the Jesus of Nazareth, whom six weeks before 
they had seen hanging upon the cross at Calvary. Little heeding 
the looks which they attract, they pass through the city gate. They 
are now on a well-known track; they cross the Kedron; they ap- 
proach Gethsemane. We lose sight of them amid the deep shadows 
of these olive-trees. Has Jesus paused for a moment to look, for the 
last time, with those human eyes of his, upon the sacred spot where 
bo cast himself on the night of his great agony, upon the ground ? 
Once more they emerge; they climb the hillside; they cross its sum- 
mit ; they are approaching Bethany. He stops ; they gather round. 
He looks upon them; he lifts his hands; he begins to bless them. 
What love unutterable in that parting look ; what untold riches in 
that blessing ! His hands are uplifted ; his lips are engaged in bless- 
ing, when slowly he begins to rise : earth has lost her power to keep ; 
the waiting, up-drawing heavens claim him as their own. An attrac- 
tion stronger than our globe is on him, and declares its power. He 
rises ; but still as he floats upward through the yielding air, his eyes 
are bent on these up-looking men ; his arms are stretched over them 
in the attitude of benediction, his voice is heard dying away in bless- 
ings as he ascends. Awe-struck, in silence they follow him with 
straining eyeballs, as his body lessens to sight, in its retreat upward 
into that deep blue, till the commissioned cloud enfolds, cuts off all 
further vision, and closes the earthly and sensible communion between 
Jesus and his disciples. That cloudy chariot bore him away, till he 
was " received up into heaven, and sat down on the right hand of God." 

How simple, yet how sublime, how pathetic this parting! No 
disturbance of the elements, no chariot of fire, no escort of angels; 




''Received up into Heaven." 



THE ASCENSION. SGI 

nothing to disturb or distract the little company from whom he parts ; 
nothing to the very last to break in upon that close and brotherly 
communion, which is continued as long as looking eye and listening 
ear can keep it up. But who shall tell us — when these earthly links 
were broken, and that cloud carried him to the farthest point in 
which cloud could form or float, and left him there — who shall tell us 
what happened above, beyond, on the way to the throne ; in what 
new form of glory, by what swift flight, attended by what angel es- 
cort, accompanied by what burst of angelic praise, that throne of the 
universe was reached ? Our straining eyes we too would turn up- 
ward to those heavens which received him, and wonder at the recep- 
tion which awaited him there, till on our ears there falls that gentle 
rebuke, " Why stand ye gazing up into heaven?" 'Think not with 
eyes like yours to pierce that cloud which hides the world of spirits 
from mental vision. Enough for you to know that this same Jesus 
shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go.' 

This mild rebuke was given to the men of Galilee upon the moun- 
tain top by two men in white apparel, who stood beside them, their 
presence unnoted till their words had broken the deep silence, and 
drawn upon themselves that gaze hitherto directed towards heaven ; 
two angels, perhaps the two who watched by the empty sepulchre ; 
one of them the same who in the hour of his great agony had been 
sent to strengthen the sinking Saviour in the garden, now stationed 
here at Olivet to soften, as it were, to the disciples the sorrow of this 
parting, to turn that sorrow into joy. But how at that moment, when 
they were discharging this kindly but humble office, were the heav- 
enly host engaged ? Surely, if at the emerging out of chaos of this 
beautiful and orderly creation, those sons of God chanted together 
the new world's birthday hymn; surely, if in that innumerable host 
above the plains of Bethlehem, a great multitude of them celebrated, 
in notes of triumph, a still better and more glorious birth — the entire 
company of the heavenly host must have struck their harps to the 
fullest, noblest, richest anthem that ever they gave forth, as the great 
Son of God, the Saviour of mankind — his earthly sorrows over, his 
victories over Satan, sin, and death complete — sat down that day with 
the Father on his throne, far above all principalities and powers, and 
every name that is named, not only in this world, but in that which 
is to come. Did these two angels who were left behind on earth, who 
Siad this humbler task assigned them, feel at all as if theirs were a 
lower, meaner service ? No, they had too much of the spirit of Him 
who had for forty days kept that throne waiting to which he had 
no\i ascended, that he might tabernacle still a little longer with the 



862 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

children of men. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least ol 
these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." 

" Why gaze ye up into heaven ? This same Jesus shall so come 
in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." ' This is not a 
final departure of this Jesus from the world he came to save. Thai 
was not the last look the earth was ever to get of him that you got of 
him as the clouds covered him from your view. He is to come again ; 
to come in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.' But 
for that, perhaps the disciples might have returned to Jerusalem with 
sad and downcast spirits, as those from whose head their Master had 
been for ever taken away. As it was, they returned, we are told, with 
great joy ; the sorrow of the departure swallowed up in the hope of 
the speedy return. So vivid, indeed, was the expectation cherished 
by the first Christians of the second advent of the Lord, that it need- 
ed to be chastened and restrained. They required to have their 
hearts directed into a patient waiting for that coming. It is very dif- 
ferent with us. We require to have that faith quickened and stimu- 
lated, which they needed to have chastened and restrained. It is 
more with wonder than with great joy that we return from witness- 
ing the ascension of our Lord. But let us remember that though the 
heavens have received him, it is not to keep him there apart for ever 
from this world. He himself cherishes no such feeling of retirement 
and separation now that he has ascended up on high. I have spo- 
ken to you of his last words of blessing which fell audibly upon fleshly 
ears. But what are the very last words that in vision he uttered: 
"He that testifieth these things saith, Surely, I come quickly." Our 
crowned Saviour waits ; with eager expectancy waits the coming of 
the day when his presence shall be again revealed among us. It may 
seem slow to us, that evolution of the ages which is preparing all 
things for his approach. But with him who says, "I come quickly," 
one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day ; 
and as soon as the curtain shall drop on the last act of that great 
drama of which this earth is now the theatre, then, quick as love and 
power can carry him, shall the same Jesus be here again on earth- 
coming in like manner as these men of Galilee saw him go up to 
heaven. Are we waiting for that coming, longing for that coming, 
hastening to that coming? Are we ready, as he says to us, "Beholdf 
I come quickly," to add as our response, "Amen. Even so cense, 
Lord Jesus 1" 






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